


mist surrounds me, fate dazzles me

by cleverjade



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Healing, King Rhoam is a dick, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:07:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29144913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleverjade/pseuds/cleverjade
Summary: What did I do when the world was ending?Some word spaghetti on how Link might process the trauma of the Calamity during the events of the game, feat. Mahler'sKindertotenlieder, Das Lied von der Erde,and Symphony no. 2 "Resurrection".
Relationships: Link/Mipha (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	1. everything stands on its head in the strange water

Blue, so much blue. Blue mist in the chamber, blue inscriptions on the walls. Radiant blue light behind his eyelids, beneath his body.

He could have been blue forever, a blue-cast corpse in that ancient tomb, but he faintly became aware of Something. A minute itch, quietly present, gently prodding at his unconsciousness. He had no concept of senses, but maybe it tapped into one of them, for how long he could not know, because time did not move in the crypt. So so gently, like an apology, like a whisper —

He was a pebble on a mountain, immemorial and frozen, until the Something gave him impetus, and slowly he teetered, tipping, sliding, rolling, tumbling, and time lurched forward again, and he descended back to the earth.

_Open your eyes._

And it was so compelling, so radiant, the impetus so great, that he opened his eyes.

Yet when he exited those great stone doors, that radiant light both blinding him and drawing him in, when the first breeze of his second life drew his senses back to his body, drew his feet from the cave to the cliff, he looked around for Something and could not find it. More accurately, he found too much of it: blue runes became an endless sky, slate beneath his feet became mountains rising nowhere, and that golden light became the dazzling sun.

It was as if the entire earth had commanded the pebble off the mountain, as if every mushroom, twig, and stone had called him out of that mausoleum. And having not sensed anything for an eternity, he felt drawn to everything at once, called in a thousand different directions. He was free, and time finally moved and he had so much of it, so much time and such desire to answer every call, and to simply _be_ in the golden sun once again.

But then the old man he met dissolved into blue in the rotting temple, and every call was superseded by one: _save Hyrule. Save my daughter._ He decided then that blue was the colour of ghosts. The monks were dead, the King was dead, he had been dead until that morning, until the Something had called him back to earth.

_Seek out Impa._ And the dead King had dissipated before his eyes, and then he was the only living thing on that cursed Plateau, and he doubted even his own vitality. Maybe he would burn up in in blue fire at any moment, maybe he would walk into the water and simply wash away. Maybe Impa was also blue and dead, and when he dragged himself into her presence she would whisper more strange words at him and evaporate into mist.

But there was nothing left for him here, and that radiant golden call from beyond his tomb echoed in his mind perhaps more strongly than the dead King’s pleas, urging the pebble downward, urging time onward. And so he slipped off the cliff’s edge on wings of cloth, and tumbled back to the earth.

—

Sagessa and the other stable inhabitants didn’t gossip, per se; they just happened to live a life bound by routine. If something unusual or uncommon were to happen, it was only natural to whisper about it while huddled around the fire, as if there was such thing as a discreet conversation at a small stable.

Some events were better conversation pieces than others. The crazy doctor fellow from the Fort, for example, was only good for a five minutes. The two treasure-hunting brothers were worth a solid quarter of an hour, until they found that they liked it here, and before long they became boring stable regulars. But the boy who stumbled through the Dueling Peaks one afternoon — now that could carry a conversation for nearly an hour.

He was pasty and sunburnt, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in forever, with a six-foot moblin spear strapped to his back. He emerged from the canyon an hour after the sun dropped below the mountaintops and hobbled toward the pond. After pulling off his shoes — no socks — the boy walked straight into the water, where he stood knee-deep for a long moment, as if he had forgotten what he was doing.

It was at this point that Shibo took pity on him, and approached the older boy with a bucket, directing him to bring some water behind the stable to bathe. A nod, and then he was carrying water — unevenly, perhaps a knee injury — round the back. Shibo meant to direct him to the shoddy bathhouse just off the stable, but the boy strode past him to the shade of a tree, where he began to scrub the monster guts and tree bark out of his hair.

Eventually, he walked inside to rent a bed, and when Tasseren asked him for twenty rupees he looked confused for a moment, before unstrapping his hip pack and tipping the contents onto the table. Apples, arrowheads, yellow seeds and brown nuts, shards of what might have once been a rusty sword, and two smoky indigo orbs spilled out of a pouch far too small to hold its contents, before he came up with a fistful of rupees to present to the speechless stable owner.

“You can — you can take that bed over there,” Tasseren said, pointing with his thumb.

“Thanks,” the boy croaked, as if he had not spoken in days.

Always the opportunist, Rensa challenged him to a horse-catching contest. There’s no way a half-dead kid with one knee could beat him, right? Yet somehow he was back with a liver chestnut mare in the blink of an eye, as if wrangling a wild animal came more naturally than washing, or speaking, or eating.

The latter was demonstrated as he stood over the cooking pot with an armful of unidentifiable plants for what felt like an eternity. Had he eaten nothing but apples on his way here? Sagessa took pity on him and showed him which of his ingredients could be combined into something edible.

“I’m actually impressed that you made it this far without any knowledge of elixirs,” she told him. He raised one brow, as if he found that funny in a way she didn’t understand.

When Sagessa turned in for the night, she saw him still sitting by the fire, staring into the crackling flames, spinning an unusual stone tablet between his hands. “Nice night,” she said to him, and he looked at her and nodded, but in a way that made her wonder if he had even understood.

She was halfway to the stable door when the weight of everyone’s unanswered questions came down upon her in their full force, enough to make her stop and turn. “Ah — hey,” she stammered, “what’s your name, anyway?”

What the hell is your deal, she didn’t say. What hole did you crawl out of, where on earth did you get that giant spear, why are you dressed like a bokoblin.

When he spoke, it was barely louder than the crackle of the fire. “Link,” he rasped. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. We don’t see a whole lot of travellers passing through here. Stay a couple of days and you’ll get to know us.” He shook his head jerkily. “Unless you’re headed somewhere in a hurry?”

“Kakariko,” he said. “I’m running late.” And chuckled to himself.

On that knee? Why the rush? And who are you to have business with the Sheikah anyway?

“Oh,” she said, and when it was clear he wasn’t a conversationalist, “well if you’re on the road tomorrow, you should really get some rest.” He nodded, and she stammered out a good-night and a see-you-in-the-morning and retreated to the stable, where Dak was waiting for the details of their bizarre interaction.

At some point in the night, she thought she saw his shadowy figure move through the stable toward his bed. He was already gone when she rose the next morning, leaving nothing but bemused gossip in his wake.

—

“I am afraid the burden of this task may be too much to bear while you are still without your memories,” said the Sheikah fossil sitting before him. She inclined her head toward him. “I leave the choice to you. When you feel you are ready to receive the princess's message, return to me.”

A flash of red. Heat like a knife in his chest. “How can you possibly say that?”

Impa’s face twisted. “Link…”

He didn’t know what to do with his hands. “The ghost — the King — hurry, he said, hurry or the world will end. Go to Impa, she knows you.” His knee shot fire up his leg as he paced. “I crawl here and you tell me to take my time and think on it. Why? Why did I sleep if I didn’t need to wake up? Do people need me or not?”

He sucked in a breath and made to continue, but the words on his tongue evaporated at the shock on Impa’s face.

“It has been a long time since I heard you speak your mind like that, Link.” And she laughed — laughed at him.

The knife was in his throat now. He supposed he hadn’t spoken much since waking. Easier to imagine it was a physical pain rather than an emotional one.

She gestured to one of the cushions on the floor. “Sit, please. The way you favour that knee is unsettling.”

He meant to sit in one fluid motion, but maybe he’d forgotten how to do that too, and he collapsed onto the cushion. The weight of his mad dash to Kakariko — three days, mostly on foot — finally hit him then, settled into his tired bones, and he felt heat well up behind his eyelids.

“Old friend.” So much in those words: warmth, mourning, bitterness, sorrow.

“I was a friend, was I?” He felt the same way now as when he peered into a pond on the Plateau, the one uphill of the rotting temple, and saw his reflection for the first time. Like looking at a stranger. “What else? Was I anything else?”

“You were many things, Link.” Impa looked pained. “There were so many expectations put upon you. The princess and the knight have been so many people throughout the ages, each one elevated to untouchable legend. They — we — took that perfect golden Hero out of the storybooks and children’s tales and handed him to you as a template, and that was what you had to be.”

“That’s…a lot.”

“‘A lot’ is an understatement,” she agreed, offering him a ghost of a smile. “I knew two versions of you. The first one I respected greatly as an athlete and a warrior, but Goddess, he drove me up the wall! He appeared so stony and uninvested. He was a meathead,” she grinned, “and I am truly sorry you don’t remember the times I told you that.

“But he was untidy, and sometimes he let that facade slip, and that was when I knew the second version of you. You were so young, Link. It was — it was so unfair, what we did to you, and I am truly sorry.

“Your survival is a second chance for all of us, and I have no intention of wasting it by repeating our past mistakes. I will not force you to be a legend this time. Link, what if you don’t remember? Do I hand you a storybook about a fantastic golden hero who lived a hundred years ago? I think not. You can be someone different this time round. But I cannot tell you who that is.”

Was she serious?

“Do you have any idea how hard I worked to drag myself here so you could tell me no?” The rawness in his voice surprised him. “I’ll just pack my shit and be off, then. The stable dog was better company than you.”

She’d expected his anger, clearly, as she raised a hand to him. “Link —“

“Forget it,” he snarled. “The ghost-King tells it like it is, and he’s dead. Maybe he’s still bumping around the Plateau —“

“Do not listen to the King,” Impa objected firmly.

He snorted. “Jealous?”

“If the King was right, his kingdom would not have been annihilated, his daughter would not be trapped in the Castle, and he would not be dead.”

Huh.

“I’ve talked a lot, but please allow an old woman one more monologue, will you?” She took his silence for permission. “The Princess’ power is that of the goddess Hylia. It is older than time itself, passed down from mother to daughter, wielded countless times by countless women. That power never belonged to the King. He was not a goddess, or a priestess, or a scholar: compared to that, a King is nothing more than a common man.

“The golden power is inextinguishable, but it alone will not destroy Ganon. The spirit of the hero is what will prevail alongside her. A hundred years ago, the King thought the recipe for victory constituted a neat list of items and attributes: a sword, a blessing, a list of tasks to be completed. Let me be clear when I say this is false, as evidenced by our defeat.

“As I said before, I do not wish to repeat our past mistakes. When the Princess could not do things the way the King desired, he decided the fault was with her. He is in death as he was in life — he has no concept of how powerful his daughter is. If you believe Hylia’s power has an expiry date…well, you would be misinformed.

“Humour me and trust in the Princess. Believe it or not, this is by her design: your resurrection, the journey ahead of you. When I advise you to wait until you are ready to take on that demon, trust that the Princess is advising you too.”

She looked at him. “I hope this has enlightened you somewhat.”

“Sure. King’s full of it and you’re playing games.”

Impa snorted. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.” She rose to her feet. “When was the last time you ate?”

“This morning.”

“A proper meal?”

He paused. She cackled as she crossed the room.

“One hundred years ago, you would have been horrified to hear that. You were the best cook of the Champions.”

He blinked. “You’re joking.” Tell that to the slimy concoctions that had graced every cooking pot from here to the East Post. Why couldn’t he have remembered that instead of climbing?

“Not at all.” A word through the door to who he presumed to be Paya, and she came to sit on a cushion just across from him. “Good food does wonders for the body and the mind. Have a meal with us, it’s late in the afternoon already.”

“I’ll eat with you if you give me a few straight answers.” He held his hand up as she began to protest. “I know, storybooks, King is dumb, whatever. Tell me — tell me what my favourite colour was.”

She chuckled. “Goddesses, it’s been a hundred years, boy. I don’t have a clue.” But her eyes slid to the ceiling, or perhaps beyond it, as she searched for a scrap of memory to throw for him. “I can offer you a story instead, if you’d like. I remember you as a cadet. You enlisted quite late — most Hylian pages start at the age of seven, but you did not join until you were much older, rumour had it. However, you became a squire at fourteen, right on schedule.”

Like looking in the pond, but with no reflection, no recognition in that scummy water.

“When I asked you what your secret was, how you caught up so quickly, you told me ‘frogs’.”

He gaped at her. “Are you messing with me?”

“Ha!” She guffawed. “No, you were the one messing with me! I had never heard a word pass your lips before, withdrawn as you were. Oh, you were a devil. I was stunned by your sass sometimes.”

A tap on the door, and Paya entered, carrying soup, rice balls, and hot water for tea. She flushed as Link thanked her.

“So, uh, was it the frogs?”

Impa pushed a plate toward him. “I thought you were referring to the guardian deity frog statues at first — Goddess-given talent or something of the sort. Arrogant and slightly blasphemous. Later, though, I realized you likely meant hasty elixirs. To make you go faster.”

“That’s a terrible joke.”

“Oh, I know.”

His head spun as he bit into his rice ball. Meat and cabbage. He had asked for stories. Why did his insides feel like ice?

“Link.” He couldn’t look at her. “I am so sorry.”

He shook his head. “It feels like you’re talking about a stranger.”

“Remembering who you are is not the same as remembering what you have done. I do not wish to give you tales to live up to. Like I said, this is our second chance.”

“You told me so, eh?”

Impa’s eyes crinkled. “It’s an old woman’s privilege to say ‘I told you so’.”

—

Later, after the sun had set, he sat at the table near the cooking pot, preparing ingredients for Paya to make into elixirs. Impa had offered her granddaughter’s healing skills to him, and while he didn’t want to impose on the shy girl, his knee really did hurt.

His knife kept slipping on the tough skin of the armoranth she had given him. The best cook of the Champions, Impa had said. Was there any physical memory of that, any vestigial cooking skills left in his fingers? He closed his eyes, let the sound of the rushing river flush away the frustration.

Later still, he brought his finished work down the wooden stairs to the cooking fire. Paya must have taken note of how long the task had taken him. Wielder of a big knife defeated by a little knife. Embarrassing.

When he glanced at her from his fireside stool and mumbled a thank you, he realized she was just as red as him. “Don’t worry about it,” she squeaked, and nearly tipped the armoranth into the dirt.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one out of their element, then.

“When did you learn to make elixirs?”

Paya startled. “Ah — Grandmother taught me the basics when I was young. But Trissa teaches me the most — she owns the shop there.” She waved the stirring spoon at the general store.

He nodded, staring into the fire, and let her be. Red embers against an inky sky. The smell of something strongly herbal, simmering in the pot. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend this night was a snapshot of a larger life, that he wouldn’t soon float away from this quiet town like heat into the night air.

Was this the life he could have had if the world had not ended? No, he was a knight of the Royal Guard, Impa said. Without the Calamity, he would likely have continued to serve. The contrast was almost amusing: a warrior boy, grown and molded in garrisons and castles, adrift in a wild land.

He glanced to his right at the Sheikah girl, now covering the pot to simmer. “How old are you, Paya?”

She jumped. “S—sixteen, Master Link.”

“Do you think I’m older than you?”

“Oh — ah — you are over a hundred years old, are you not?” He could see her fighting the urge to cover her face, hands clenching and unclenching her tunic. “Oh! But you didn’t age in the Shrine — you mean your age before the Calamity — goodness, you don’t know, I suppose?”

He chuckled, as if that wasn’t horrifying. “Nope.”

Now she did hide her face. “I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to be insensitive! I didn’t — I didn’t know — that —“

“— that a person could forget that?” He slid onto the ground and leaned back against his stool. There were so many stars over the village. “You’d be surprised at the things I’ve forgotten.”

If he was honest with himself, it barely bothered him. He had left Impa’s home that evening feeling the way he had when he first climbed out of his crypt. The anxiety he felt on the way to Kakariko, the King’s desperation echoing in his ears — the elder had set his mind at ease. Her complete confidence in the woman that had woken him was soothing, and the fog of panic had evaporated from his brain.

He turned his head to Paya, who squeaked in embarrassment. “It’s alright, really.”

“— I — I’m sure you came to terms with that. But — that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have spoken more carefully.” Her hands rested on her cheeks now, a sort of compromise between hiding and not-hiding. “I don’t see a lot of Hylians — but my guess is — I suppose my first impression was that you were older. By a couple of years, perhaps.”

“Do you not leave the village much? There’s a Hylian stable not far south.”

“Yes, and another not far northwest. I help my grandmother take care of the village — my place is here.”

“Sounds busy.” The fire hissed as she lifted the lid to check on her concoction. “Do you enjoy that? Your duty?”

His voice bit into that last word unkindly, and Paya stared at him. A long moment passed. “Paya, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” Who was the insensitive one now? Ridiculous, childish of him to imagine Kakariko to be a fairy tale world. Of course she had responsibilities.

When she spoke, though, her voice was gentle. “Is that how you see yourself?”

Could she see his reflection in the pond?

“I always remind myself that I’m doing this for the sake of our people,” she informed him. Not a hint of animosity. “My responsibilities are not a burden. Maybe yours were before the Calamity.”

“I wouldn’t know.” He shifted uneasily as she ladled the elixir into a mug. “I’m sorry, I spoke without thinking.”

“Instinct is a form of memory,” she said, handing him the steaming cup. “Whatever seems — ah — whatever is most natural — there is always a reason.”

“Who told you that?”

“Cado used to say it when he taught me to fight. Please, drink the elixir.”

Right. He took a sip of the strongly herbal brew. “You do a bit of everything around here.”

The girl nodded. “Everyone needs something different from me — I see to the upkeep of many things.”

He threw back the rest of the elixir and set the cup on the ground. The smell lingered in his sinuses. “How long will it take to kick in?”

“Ah — it will feel better quickly. But you must not push yourself too hard in the coming days — really! — and you can take more with you.” She stoppered the last of a handful of bottles, then handed them to him. Inky violet in the clear glass. “Master Link, if I may ask — how did you hurt yourself?”

He shrugged. “No idea. I woke up one day and it hurt. I think I climbed too much the day before.”

She looked at him for a long moment, looked at him like a puzzle she was trying to put together. “Instinct,” she mused. “You thought you could climb for longer than your body could handle. Like the armoranth.”

“Pardon?”

“The armoranth — you cut it so evenly at the start, then the pieces got larger. It is not an easy herb to mince. You got tired.”

So Impa was right: he had known how to cook. The recipes might be long gone from his brain, but his fingers — there was knowledge there. And there must be more knowledge in his arms and legs, between his ribs, under his heart, and all he had to do was reach inside and pull it out and look at it, the way Paya had just now, and then he’d know — really know —

“At any rate, Master Link, you should get some rest.” Paya jolted him from his revelations as she stood, gathering her cookware. “The inn is just across the way — staying up late can’t be great for your health.”

“Ah, right — uh — goodnight, Paya.”

She flushed again. “G-goodnight, Master Link.” He watched her leave, turning in for the night as if she hadn’t just split his head wide open.

Remembering who you are is not the same as remembering what you have done.

The fire dwindled to embers, and he rose to his feet and walked painlessly to the inn, leaving the sound of rushing water behind.


	2. I stand here and wait for my friend

Thinking back on it, he almost wished Paya hadn’t been so wise. Now he scrutinized everything he did in hopes of inventing a memory, to the point where instinct had no meaning.

Take his equestrian abilities, for example. Sure, he’d watched every stable inhabitant like a hawk as they did their chores, but there had to be some vestigial horse knowledge within him, right? He checked and double-checked every action: how he saddled his horse, brushed her down, the way he mounted and dismounted.

And if he really had retained something, what would that mean? Was there a regional horse-habit he could trace to his birthplace? There were very few living souls he could explain his dilemma to, and fewer still that could offer him guidance. The Hateno researcher he sought would hopefully be one of those people.

He’d worked so hard to stir up some fragment of the past that when something finally surfaced, it felt like a lightning strike, an ice-water plunge, free falling.

Riding through the Ash Swamp at midday, steam rising from the metal carcasses strewn about as the morning’s rain evaporated, the smell of hot steel in the sun —

_(Laughing, shrieking; splinters shedding from the stick in his hand; clouds of dust rising from the cracked path up to the clouds in the sky; green and brown on his heels, banging through the shop door; hissing water and a bristling moustache; a shout from the aproned man, shooing them out; and out through the door once again, whooping and hollering; and the clanging resumes, rhythmic, driving — )_

It had stunned him so thoroughly as to stop him in his tracks, and he had spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the fort, half-listening to some crazy researcher ramble about statues and curses. Paya had said to take it easy, he grudgingly acknowledged as the sun sank below the mountains, the day officially wasted.

He dreamed of nonsense that night, that he was standing on a mountain saddle watching a landslide. No, landslide was too gentle a term - he was watching the earth shed one of its peaks, walls of stone crashing down the mountainside to meet the raging waters below. Countless people bustled around him, unconcerned.

“What happened here?” he asked one of them. “Why is the mountain falling?”

They looked at him quizzically. “Mountains don’t fall in the future.”

Bewildered, he turned again to the landslide, but now it was gone, nothing more than a grassy hill. Petals and pollen drifted lazily where boulders and trees had tumbled a moment ago.

“There was a landslide a moment ago.” He looked to his right, but the person had vanished. He was alone in the meadow, silent but for the sound of grasses blowing.

He woke to the sound of wind whistling through the holes in the old fort.

—

He tentatively asked Purah about his episode one day, doing chores for her at the lab. The girl nearly toppled off her stool as she scrambled for her notebook. “I need details!” she screeched. “Potential triggers, mood changes, senses affected. Now, Linky, now!”

He gaped at her. She scowled at him.

“Well?!? Don’t tell me you didn’t document anything?”

“Uh…”

She flopped back onto her seat with a loud groan, scribbling on her notepad. “A hundred years…and subject maintains…boring, anti-scientific tendencies…”

It was hard to imagine Purah and Impa were cut from the same cloth. Whereas her younger (older?) sister treated his memory loss with care and tact, words would simply fall out of Purah’s mouth. Her jumble of anecdotes was disorienting if he focused on them; the only thing that kept him grounded was how quickly she flitted from one story to the next, a constant stream-of-consciousness only interrupted by demands that he help her with her work.

Shaking his head, he brought his shattered focus back to the present. “What details do you need?”

Purah glared at him. “Anything, Linky! Time of day, weather effects, sights, sounds, smells — did you make _any_ observations?”

He could feel himself lift off the ground, start to float away. “It was around noon, maybe? And sunny— ”

_(And hot, hot outside and hotter still indoors; flames in a hearth and a bucket in the flames and ingots in the bucket; and a green woman on a green hill stained amber by a sun hanging low, stains on her apron and calling into the woods; and they scramble up the hill to her as the shadows grow long — )_

He landed with a thud, and realized Symin was herding him to a stool, concern in his touch, Purah wide-eyed and blessedly silent. He slumped over the table and rubbed his temples.

He cast an eye toward the boggled six-year-old researcher. “Are you going to write anything?”

“Don’t sass me,” she spluttered, tossing her notebook onto the table. “Your episode just now — was it like the one you had earlier?”

He nodded weakly. “It just hit me out of the blue. I don’t know why.”

Symin cleared a corner of the table and set a teapot down. “Memory triggers can be difficult to identify. We recall a great number of things every day related to our daily lives.”

“So I’ll never know what made me remember?”

“Not necessarily. Strong sensory inputs are a reliable trigger. If you have a visual memory, it might be caused by something you see. If you have a tactile memory, it could be an object, a texture, something like that.”

“Mm.” Different from Paya’s theory. “So it’s not like instinct?”

“Of course not, dummy.” Purah rolled her eyes. “I thought I explained this to you yesterday! Repeated actions and processes myelinate your neural pathways. Doesn’t matter how long you slept, you can’t just erase hardwiring.” She reached for her notebook, but Symin had moved it to place the teapot down. “ _Symin!_ ”

“It’s right here, Ms Director,” Symin groaned.

“Ugh!” She snatched it off a haphazard mound of graphs and diagrams. “I have a system, you know! _Anyway_ , Linky, as you can clearly see, your scan was perfectly normal.” She waved a page of unforgivable chicken scratch in his face. “You don’t have to relearn what’s baked into your brain! It’s simple science.”

Simple was a word. “I thought you dealt with shrines and stuff.”

“Rude as ever!” Purah screeched and cuffed him with the book. “I did a great deal of research on implicit memory with Zelly, trying to uncover the sealing power. How do you think I kept my funding after the Royal Tech Lab explosion?”

“You blew up the Royal Tech Lab?” Purah waved this off as Symin resignedly nodded behind her.

“Anyway, if you’d stop interrupting me, maybe I’d be able to finish a thought,” Purah declared. She flopped across the table, resting her chin in her hands. “According to my scan, there’s no brain damage suppressing your memories. You probably just forgot because you’re old.”

Symin grimaced as he poured three cups of oversteeped tea.

“But you and Impa remember plenty.”

Purah groaned. “Do you ever listen? Your neurones haven’t fired for a hundred years, it’s completely different.”

Link tuned out her rambling as he sipped his bitter tea. He cast a glance a Symin, tentatively tidying the heaps of loose notes cast about. “Daily life makes people remember things.”

The middle-aged researcher blinked. “Yes, precisely.”

“So the more I live, the more I’ll remember.”

Symin nodded. “They may have faded with no sensory triggers for the past century, but physiologically, your memories should still be there. I expect you will remember many more things in the near future.”

He ran his thumb over the chipped rim of his mug. “I like Symin,” he said loudly to Purah, still expounding. “He gets to the point.”

“Science isn’t about cutting corners,” she informed him. “I don’t know why Zelly ever forgave you! You’re boring and you never listen.”

“Forgave me for what?”

“ _Anyway_ , Linky, are you going to tell me what you remembered or not?” Rifling through her notebook, she found a blank page and readied her pen, staring at him expectantly.

Goddesses, he missed Impa right now.

“Um — there was a house on a hill. Or maybe near a hill. I was with a boy, and a man with a big mustache kept kicking us out, and a woman called us back in.”

Purah frowned. The pen scratched.

“There was a lot of steam and fire. It was hot. I think — maybe he was a blacksmith.”

“Hmmm.” She chewed on the end of her pen. “Are you sure he was a blacksmith? How do you know? What species was the boy?” His stomach flipped. Was there something wrong with the scans? Were those vivid scenes a mirage conjured up by a damaged brain?

“They were Hylians,” he said weakly. “There was steam rising off the Guardians, like the forge.”

“Aha — water! The Zora keep excellent records, you were splashing around the Domain as a kid. Do you remember anything watery?”

He felt rather ill now. “There were cracks in the dirt path.”

Purah shook her head dismissively. “Any glowing blue stones? Big red fish, maybe?”

“No.”

She tsked.

“It was the same thing both times. I remembered it twice.” A hole in his chest burned like ice, threatened to swallow him. “He could have been family, maybe.”

“No, no, your whole family was military. Are you positive none of them were fish?”

“Ms Director.” Bless Symin. “I should go down to the market before I make dinner. Link might like to come. I don’t believe I gave him a proper village tour yesterday.”

“Oh!” Purah jumped up, scrambling after one of her many scraps of paper. “I made a list of things somewhere — don’t tell me you moved all my stuff again — _Symin!_ ”

—

At the Ton Pu Inn that night, he dreamed.

He was standing barefoot in a pond. A mustache and a bucket and a deep voice towered over him; and those giant strides, one as long as three of his own, leading two children back up the hill.

“I saw a stag today.” The other boy’s face was fuzzy, features constantly shifting. (Because it was a dream, and dreams are so indistinct, and though it felt achingly familiar, who could say if any of it had really happened?)

Link could see it too, now, suddenly in sharp focus. A trail of trees with deep gouges on them, the two of them crouching behind each one, child-size bows in hand, as the buck rubbed its horns against a great oak. Wind, a mountain cold knife through the summer heat, whistled through the trees and tousled their hair, and the velvety antlers startled and vanished into the wood.

His companion turned to him and for a moment, he was looking in a mirror: youthful wonder, well-patched knees and twigs in his hair, freckles glowing in the midday sun. And then they were running, giggling and stumbling and dropping their bows as they gave chase, knowing the creature had easily outpaced them but still running, running —

Then it was winter, and snow slid _thumpthumpthump_ off the roof like a thunderstorm, and the fire was hot and the forge was cold as they watched two mounted riders cross the bridge. They were outnumbered now, four adults to two children, and as the man and woman dismounted he ran to them. They swept him into their warm arms, and then he was bundled in blankets, indoors but freezing cold as his father piled logs on the fire.

Was this real?

And now he could see the sword by the door, as tall as him but growing shorter the longer he looked at it (or maybe he was getting taller?), two wings and three triangles on that polished hilt, raised to the touch and always ice cold, always winter in the house in that village. Where did the stag go? Where did the other boy go?

He opened the door to white — white sky, white on the trees, white on the ground — and there he was, the other child now a young man, a full-size bow on his back and a giant pair of antlers in his hand. “Do I have to wake you up every morning?” He grinned and shook the snow off the antlers. “Biggest ones yet. I swear, they leave ‘em lying around for me.”

He was afraid to speak, afraid it would break the spell, end the dream. “Where did you find them?”

“Just off the path, on the way home from drills. I’m getting way better at sparring, we should have a go later.” The boy craned his head around Link to peer inside. “Where’s your papa? He’ll love these things.”

Where was his father?

“I don’t know.” He was dreaming, it was a dream, and his father was gone, because it was only a dream.

He woke up in the Ton Pu Inn, moon still high in the sky, and did not go back to sleep.

—

Symin found him outside the lab at five in the morning, sitting against the apple tree.

“It’s awfully early to see you here,” he said.

“Couldn’t sleep.” He wished he could. Already his dream was fading from his mind’s eye, and he replayed the scenes again and again, burning it into his memory.

He pointed north. “That’s Mount Lanayru.”

“Yes, it is.” Symin took a seat to his left.

_(glacial wind through the summer haze — )_

He lay his head back against the tree, trusting it to keep him upright if he suddenly returned to the past again. “There’s a cool wind off it in the summer, yes?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Did something happen?”

“I was in Hateno.”

“When?”

_(running up the cracked dirt path to the bridge, shrieking and giggling — )_

“I was young. I grew up here.” The words took on a life of their own: things he didn’t know to be true until he heard them leave his lips. “My parents were knights. There was no place for a child where they were. I was raised here by the blacksmith and his family.”

He was shaking now, but he spoke freely. “The boy was Gulley. We grew up together. He was going to be a blacksmith like his father, but he loved animals more than anything. He said they’d gather near him when he was alone, but they always ran when I came with him.”

They looked on as the sun rose from the sea, lit up the glaciers of Mount Lanayru.

“Did your family have a history in Hateno?”

“They had property here. They had arrangements with the blacksmith to maintain it. When I got older, we would come in the winter.” He traced the contour of the horizon with his finger, over the peaks of the Lanayru range, across the cleft in the Dueling Peaks, to rest on a hillside southwest of the village. “There’s a mountain pass that way, yes?”

“There is.” Symin rose to his feet, peering into the distance. “The village used to extend further that way, I recall. No one has lived there in my lifetime. There were too many goblinfolk in the Taran Mountains for the area to be resettled.”

“And the loop down there?”

“Ah, yes. The old Equestrian Riding Course. The majority of the military exercises happened elsewhere, but this site saw some use leading up to the Calamity. Again, I never saw it while it was operational.”

_(horses, now, and a jagged row of riders outfitted in gaudy gear; two wings and three triangles fluttering from the roof of the lodge; spears of all lengths and bows of all sizes levelled and drawn as the rain poured, green washing away to mud and stone as round and round they went, round and round — )_

The vision didn’t stun him so badly the third time, and he forced his eyes to stay open, layering echoes of the past over what he saw presently. “They were training a militia.”

“Do you remember this?”

“I can see it.” A loose company of men and women marching through the town to that muddy loop, naive but spirited, unskilled but well-armed by the town blacksmith. “In preparation for the Calamity. We didn’t know where it would emerge, but Necluda was at low risk of bring ground zero. Troops were allocated elsewhere. The militia would defend the fort.”

“Incredible.” He glanced at Symin, the researcher rubbing his chin. “Did you speak to anyone about the history of Hateno?”

The thought of voluntarily speaking to a villager, risking their implicit assumption that he wasn’t a reanimated pre-Calamity corpse, made him chuckle. “Is it written on a wall somewhere?”

“It might as well be. The identity of Hateno revolves strongly around its survival. They had no garrison. They were fully self-reliant and they prevailed. Did you have any involvement with the militia training program?”

“I don’t think so. I was only here in the winter.” _I’m getting way better at sparring, we should have a go later._ “I think Gulley joined up. He was never meant to be a fighter. It’s what was asked of him.”

“I can do some research on your friend, if you’d like. We could find out what happened to him.”

It occurred to him then that Gulley had lived and died without him, that he had lost his friend long before he’d found him again. Symin was rambling about Hateno historia and local records, and Gulley was part of that company flickering before his eyes, down the main thoroughfare and through the gate, bluer and bluer, going and gone.

He closed his eyes in an attempt to clear them, return to the present, and then he was at the first lantern, at the second, halfway down the hill as Symin let him go.

—

Three thousand rupees was unfathomable to him, but the old house demanded he save it. He stood before the bridge facing Bolson’s ugly model homes and let the past rush back to him.

He saw two things at once: the forge layered over the home to the right, standing out amidst other old buildings of an age forgotten. The bridge, nearly the same now as it was then, but lifeless; no children, no riders. The cooking pot both lit and unlit — the fire crackling and a family around a table under the tree; the fire cold and a lone sledgehammer leaning against a stone wall.

Inside the house now, and the double vision made him stagger: the woman with the stained apron standing over a table, canning preserves for the winter, Gulley’s little fingers stealing pear quarters from the pot. The single weapon mount, unused in the present but not in the past, a plain but well-crafted sword straight from the forge. Upstairs now, and his heart ached at the emptiness, dust nearly covering marks in the floor from beds and wardrobes long gone.

He caught his breath in the yard out back, lying face-up to the sky. He could see their faces in the clouds. Inescapable, unforgettable, features sharpening the more he looked. Maybe he was waiting for Gulley to come back to life, charging down the cracked summer path, dragging those antlers through the snow.

Maybe Gulley was waiting for him to come back to death, somewhere just beyond the waking world.

—

He had three dreams that night.

In the first dream, he stood on a road winding alongside a riverbank. Paya stood behind him, passing him stones and sandbags.

“We have to dam up the path before the flood comes,” she said.

“I don’t understand.” He looked down the road at gentle grasslands, a lively village. “There’s no water.”

“We have to dam up the path,” she insisted. “Before the flood comes.”

He frowned and took a sandbag from her. They built a wall for what seemed like ages, but every time he looked, it barely reached his mid-calf. “Why is it still so low?” he asked. “We’ve been at this for hours.”

“The wind is blowing it away,” said Paya. “We have to build it higher.”

“I don’t understand.” He looked at the village again. Grass blades fluttered lazily in the gentle breeze. “What’s happening?”

“The flood is coming,” she said. “We have to dam up the path before the kingdom is gone.”

—

In the second dream, he was sliding down a rocky slope on a battered wooden shield. The harbour got closer and the path got bumpier until he hit the beach and bailed onto the sand, rolling onto his side, fishing rod flying.

He was barely on his feet before Gulley tumbled past him on his own sled, whooping and laughing. “Watch out!” he shrieked, nearly hitting the water before he lost control and spilled into the sand.

Link dashed after their tackle box as it tumbled toward the water, stuffed with more snacks than supplies. “Got it,” he panted. “I got it!”

Gulley lay face-up on the sand, breathless, exuberant. “You only beat me because I closed my eyes,” the boy informed him. “It was so dusty. I squinted, but it still got in my eyes.”

“Because you were losing!” he retorted. “It’s not dusty in front.”

“Whatever, I’ll win next time.” He sat up as Link dropped onto the sand beside him. They pulled off their shoes and socks and rolled up their tattered pant cuffs.

Link waded to a rock to cast his line, but Gulley simply stood hip-deep in the water. “You’re not gonna catch many fish that way,” he teased, but the other boy shushed him.

“Watch this,” he stage-whispered. “The fish come to me when I stand really still.”

Bemused, Link watched as the water settled. One porgy came, then another. More, still, until Gulley was encircled by fish, coming right to him in their curiosity.

“This is the hard part,” his companion breathed, and inch by inch, he lowered his hands to the surface of the water. Barely moving, his fingertips beneath the surface, now his palms, knees bent and ready —

A bite on Link’s line startled them both, and he nearly dropped his rod, foot slipping down the rock into the water. The fish vanished as the water frothed. “You got one!” Gulley crowed, his stealth mission forgotten, charging through the wake in violent splashes. “Reel it in!”

Hours later, exhausted but content, they lay on the beach, summoning the will to trek back home.

“I decided I don’t wanna be a blacksmith,” Gulley declared.

“What are you gonna be instead?”

“I’m gonna live in the forest with all the animals when I grow up.”

Link giggled. “Grown-ups don’t do that. They have jobs.”

“I know, but that’s boring.”

The clouds drifted lazily.

“Are you gonna be a knight?”

“No!” Link laughed. “I’m gonna be a mountain climber.”

“That’s not a job either!”

“I’ll make it a job.” He idly dug in the sand with a finger. “I’m gonna climb all the mountains in Hyrule. You can come too.”

“What happens when you run out of mountains?”

“That’s impossible. My papa says there’s infinity mountains. I’ll climb them all, and I’ll put a rock on top of each one. So everyone knows I did it.”

“What if there’s already a rock up there?”

“Then I’ll throw it off the mountain and put an even bigger rock there.”

They listened to the seagulls and the gentle lapping of the tide.

“If you had a really special rock, where would you hide it?”

“Hmmm.” He considered this for a moment. “I’d put it in a box and hide it in the ocean.”

Gulley snickered. “That’s silly. I’d hide it under another rock. People would take the top one and my special rock would be safe.”

The sun winked behind the peaks towering over them, and Gulley scrambled to his feet. “C’mon, let’s bring the fish to my mama before she wonders where we are.”

They gathered their things and slung their shoes over their shoulders, trotting barefoot up the hill to dinner.

—

In the third dream, it was pouring rain. He sank into the mud up to his knees as he struggled through the deluge.

“Why did so many people ride this way?” he shouted. Hoof prints peppered the bog. “They destroyed the ground. It’s impassable.”

“It’s not the riders’ fault. It’s the weather. You should have stopped the rain.”

He looked for the other person. “Where are you?”

Thunder clapped and the rain sheeted down. He couldn’t see anyone.

“You should have stopped the rain.”

—

Purah was waiting for him at the top of the hill when he returned the next morning. “Fancy seeing you here,” he grumbled.

“Where did you go yesterday? I needed you to move stuff for me,” she scolded.

“Sorry. I was busy buying my dead friend’s house.” He brushed past her into the lab. “What do you need?”

Symin sat at the table, piles of books on all sides, teacup on a coaster. Even his messes were tidier than Purah’s best efforts. He shot a significant look at the director.

“I’d appreciate it if you could bring these books upstairs with me,” she said after a pause, in a tone that didn’t match her young body. She pointed at a small stack of texts.

Up the winding stairs, and she sat down by the telescope on the roof, patting the step next to her. They sat in silence, watching the morning fog lift off the valley.

“I owe you an apology,” she began, as if she had run it over several times in her mind. “It was unscientific of me to suggest your memories weren’t accurate. I should have let you finish.”

“It’s alright,” he said.

“It was unkind, too. I was a bad friend. I should have listened better.”

Below them, the windmills turned. The lanterns faintly flickered.

“When we put you into the Slumber of Restoration, we had no idea how long it would take. It was theorized you might come out with deficits, or that you might lose your memory, or that it might not work at all. So when you arrived, and you still looked and sounded like yourself — I guess I got excited.”

“You thought I wouldn’t come back at all.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just thought I might be waiting another hundred years.”

The implications of that statement, the true nature of her second adolescence, went unsaid.

“You didn’t know I grew up in Hateno, did you?”

“No. You were a private kid back then.” She seemed relieved at the levity.

“Do you want to see my parents’ place?” He stood and walked to the telescope. “I don’t know how to work this thing.”

“Just point it out. My eyesight hasn’t been this sharp since I was in my twenties.” She squinted as he indicated a dark splotch on the distant plateau. “Oh, that place! Traders bivvy there sometimes if the weather is bad. They come from a fishing village through the pass out back.”

The thought of that ghostly ruin sustaining life gave him comfort. “Was the village there before?”

“It was settled then, but it’s more of a post-Calamity town. I haven’t been there in years, but it’s a cute spot. You should check it out if you ever need a rest.”

Indeed, he nearly had. Waking after a tumultuous night, he had considered the option the pass presented to him. An out from this terrifying waking world. North, to Purah and Impa, raging mechanical monstrosities, impossible expectations, crushing memories? Or south?

_If you had a really special rock, where would you hide it?_

If something once meant the world to you, how would you preserve it?

“I thought about it,” he admitted. “But I want to take care of some things first.”

Purah scoffed. “You mean Impa’s chores? Mine are way more fun.”

They walked back downstairs, where Symin was pouring himself another cup of tea. “I’ve been going through old records,” he said, fingertips parched from turning pages. “I might have some leads on your friend, if you’re interested.”

In his mind’s eye, Gulley stood hip-deep in the harbour, vibrant, dynamic, a glowing snapshot from a time where he yet lived.

“Wait until I’m in town next,” he said. _Keep him safe a little longer._


	3. Tell me a bedtime story

“Impa. Impa.”

The old woman tore her eyes from the slate. “My apologies. These images…I thought this world existed only in my memories.” Link peered at the slate, an image of a castle bridge onscreen. “This would be mostly destroyed now, I am sure. And this —” a pavilion in the foreground, castle rising in the distance — “little of these structures remain.”

He hadn’t thought much of those twelve stills at first, but watching Impa was different. Unfamiliar scenes to his mind, but not his heart: a dull pain pulsed in his throat, and an uneasy panic nibbled at the edges of his brain.

“Did I go to these places?”

“Most of them, certainly. You accompanied the Princess everywhere in that final year.”

“Can you tell me where any of these are?”

Impa frowned at the Slate. “These ones are relatively near to the Castle, although you must have guessed that. And you might recognize some of the landmarks in these ones from your travels already.” She indicated a lakeside view with Dueling Peaks in the background, two statues crouched near the bridge he’d spotted from the Plateau. “Oh — but this one is not far from here. It’s a well-maintained road. You could make it there in a day.”

She handed him the Slate, and he peered at the towering stone gate onscreen. “Is that Mount Lanayru?”

“It is. I’m surprised you recognized it so easily. Do you recall being here?”

He laughed. “I guessed. It’s the only snowy mountain I could see from Hateno.”

Impa nodded slowly. “I suppose it’s quite visible from the town — it’s been many years since I was there. How is Purah these days?”

“She’s six.”

_“Pardon?”_

Thus began a flurry of questions he could not answer — _how? when? what on earth was she thinking?_ — and a rant he imagined could only be delivered by a close family member. — _Would have killed her to write me once in awhile — taking care of the village all alone while she plays mad scientist — Symin’s useless, I thought he’d be a voice of reason — you better not have encouraged her —_

Goddess, their poor mother.

He waited her out. “Did she really study memories before the Calamity?”

Impa rolled her eyes. “I believe my sister was…prudent to focus her grant applications around brain scans and the medical applications of ancient technology. I doubt many of her projects would have gotten the royal seal of approval otherwise.”

“It was a pretense so she could blow more shit up.”

“Well, yes. But she really did study the subject. Did she not get into that topic with you?”

He’d left Hateno with a spoken promise to Purah that he’d bring her more Guardian parts, and an unspoken one to leave her out of the topic of memories going forth. It was better for everyone involved: less frustration, less pain, and a lower chance of interfering with his recollections. He’d managed to catch a quick word with Symin on his last night in town, after she’d gone to bed.

“Is she always going to be so sensitive about the past?” he’d asked.

The scientist had sighed. “The Calamity is a difficult subject to broach with anyone. It’s in her nature to speak plainly about the past — her way of dealing with it. When you remember more, it will likely be an easier conversation to have.”

It hadn’t really sunk in until then that Purah had suffered the same traumas as her sister one hundred years ago, that they wore the same scars in different ways. Purah was chaotic energy, free with her words and erratic in her actions. Impa, even after all this time, could only speak delicately about the Calamity, yet had guided her village through a century of despair with a level head.

“Purah’s difficult to talk to,” he said after a long pause. “They ran some scans, told me I would remember in time. We might talk about it when I’m there next.”

“She means well, I hope you know.”

“I do.” He looked down at the Slate again, at that weathered arch. “Do you think I’ll remember anything?”

Her eyes softened. “I truly hope so. It may take some time to come back, though. Do not put extra pressure on yourself if you can help it.”

“I hoped it would all come back before lunchtime.”

He meant it facetiously, but Impa sighed, a slow, shaky exhale that raised the hair on his arms. “We do not always recall the worst moments of our lives in perfect clarity. I want nothing more than for you to find what you are looking for, but — you are searching for the worst moments of your life. It took me years to begin to come to terms with the events of the Calamity. It could take years for you too.”

Those twelve landscapes hadn’t scared him at first, but now he wondered if that was the wrong reaction. He stood to take his leave. “If it’s a day’s travel, I should get some rest.”

She rose from her cushions to see him out. “Sleep well, old friend.”

—

All morning, he had felt like he was walking through deeper and deeper water. It only bubbled around his ankles at the West Gate. By midday, he was wading up to his mid-calf. As the afternoon dragged on, he was nearly hip-deep in ghostly water, fighting for each step.

When he finally stopped at the weathered arch, it was a relief. He checked the landscape, checked the Slate, checked the landscape again. Finally at rest. But the water kept rising, rising, and he gasped a quick breath before he was pulled under the surface and into the past.

Gold, everything golden in the setting sun. Yes, he remembered now; an earlier sunset in the early fall, days ever shorter, ever colder. Even next week, the mountain might be impassable.

The path, clear under his feet for now, glaciers high on the ridges but creeping down into the midmountain for the winter. Ice twinkling in the light. And bracelets, twinkling too; glowing golden hair, floating in the wind, floating down the mountain.

He looked at the Princess, really looked at her, and her despair reached into his chest and gripped his heart. The ends of her hair icy, as if soaked in headspring water and left to freeze. Skin red under those twinkling bracelets, those ridiculous sandals (did she climb the mountain in those??), white crescents in her red palms, purple circles under her red eyes.

He looked at her, and he tried to say something, say anything, take a fraction of that desperation and fatigue, but it was in the past, and he was in the future, and there was only silence.

Silence from him as they descended upon their friends, desperate for details. Achingly sympathetic, sharing the burden of her pain. The Goron Champion hurting with her, the Gerudo Champion holding her.

And then the earth split open, and the Rito Champion took to the skies as they quaked and feared below him, and pain and terror were splashed all over the Princess’ golden face as he stood and stared and was silent _._ And he finally turned to look at the Zora Champion, that diminutive red warrior, and he felt a knife tear through his chest. They lost. Moments after this, they lost. They were together, all of his friends, and then they lost.

What did he do?

The ghostly water did not drain away; rather, he struggled to the surface, gasping. A full moon rose above the silvery mountain, snowcapped in the spring of the present. He must have been staring at that gate for a hundred years.

“What did I do?” he asked to no one. A pathetic lament. An icy wind ruffled his hair.

_What did I do when the world was ending?_

—

Another night, another dream.

He was running through a forest. No, not running — sprinting, stumbling, pushing his body to its limits, sucking wind until his lungs hurt. Gripping a golden bracelet, dragging her along, ridiculous sandals be damned. Wind rushing through the trees, wings flapping in the sky.

He looked up. A streak of blue against the blackened sky as the Rito Champion covered their mad flight, watching ahead for what might come for them.

“What’s going on up there?” he shouted.

“Still clear! Shut your beak and move!” Revali snapped.

“We’re going,” he snarled. The bracelet slipped in his hand and he regrasped her arm and they ran and ran, feet rolling in an endless rhythm, matching his heartbeat as blood pounded in his ears.

The wind, and the wind, and the wind —

It howled, buffeted them left and right on the path, and he was so relieved to be under cover of the forest that when it was sucked into the air he fell hard to the ground, be that from despair or from the veritable hurricane surrounding them. He squinted through the downpour at the trees swirling above them in a vortex, gaping pits in the earth where they were torn out.

“Revali!” he screamed.

“Link,” she cried, and as he turned to look at her she was illuminated in lightning, hair whipping around her face, standing upright against the utter devastation of the storm.

“What do we do?” he shouted. “What do I do?”

He could have sworn she glowed golden as she extended a hand to him, and when he took it he felt the earth reach up through his toes and ground him. She grasped his arms, steadying him.

Was this more than a dream?

“Zelda,” he yelled hoarsely. “Is this real?”

He was certain she was glowing now. The rain and wind fell away as gold shimmered on her skin.

“Zelda, what did I do?”

Brighter and brighter, suffusing the night sky with warmth. The scene around them fell away.

“Zelda?”

Warmer and warmer, whiter and whiter —

—

Impa nearly missed him during her midday walk about the village. He sat in the cemetery facing the Castle, barely an ear visible from behind the great oak tree.

She made her way toward him. Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself. It took you years, he’s been awake for weeks. He’s a Hylian boy, not a golden hero. Be there for your friend.

“I see you’ve returned,” she announced, by way of a greeting. Don’t impose on him. Stand back a few metres. He used to recognize the sound of your footsteps. He would have heard you enter the cemetery.

He twisted around to look at her. “Morning,” he said.

She laughed lightly. “It’s hardly morning anymore, my friend.” A rested face, but weary eyes. He must have found something. She saw that face in the mirror for many years, back when the fields were still burning. He must be in pain.

“Did you remember anything?” she asked gently.

He regarded her for a long moment. Breathed in, breathed out. She wondered if he knew he had the same habits as Before. Measuring his his audience, metering his breaths before speaking.

“We were there in the fall,” he said suddenly.

“Yes.” Did Purah tell him that or did he remember it? “The third moon after the solstice is the last month where the mountain can be accessed. The conditions worsen quickly after that.”

“We couldn’t go earlier?”

“It’s auspicious to pray to the ancient gods at specific times of year. The last four moons belong to Nayru, keeper of the mountain. The Goddess grants us the wisdom to last the cold winter.”

Nothing but the wind whistling between the headstones, windchimes in the distance.

“Was it lucky for her to freeze in that stupid dress?”

He did remember. Purah can’t have told him that, she wasn’t there. Hylia, he was really the same person that had walked this earth a hundred years ago.

“You remember.”

“I don’t.” He looked at her with blazing intensity but couldn’t hold it, looked to the sky, looked to the castle. Breathed in and out. “I don’t remember what I did.”

Oh, the poor boy. It barely hurt to think of the Calamity after a hundred years, but seeing his distress made her ache in sympathy. “I can assure you, you were a great comfort to her.”

“Was I?” A jagged edge in his voice. “She was so tired, Impa. And I did nothing. How? How could I stand by?”

“We did everything we could for her. It wasn’t much, but we tried. You tried.” She spoke softly now, for her guilt had never really faded with her grief. “It’s as I told you before. The King believed in prescribed rituals and processes. He did his best to remove any interference, no matter where it came from. He would have removed even you if he believed you were interfering.”

He shook his head, still refusing to look at her. She should have prepared him better for this, warned him about how much it would hurt. It was selfish of her, she lamented, allowing him to wade into the past without telling him how deep those waters were. Hypocritical of her, preaching about second chances and patience.

“I didn’t mean to blindside you. Link, I am sorry.”

“I keep having dreams,” he said abruptly, in a way that sounded like he was changing the subject, even though she suspected he wasn’t.

“Can you describe them? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“They’re of natural disasters, mostly.” He looked her in the eye now. “Like an earthquake or a flood, but on an insane scale. One time an entire mountain fell over. One time the wind sucked a whole forest up into the sky.”

Oh, Hylia. “I see,” she said faintly. Scenes from the past nipped at the edges of her mind, images she’d tucked away a long time ago. Damn her selfish, hypocritical heart. It’s too soon for him to remember the worst, it could hurt him so badly —

“Sometimes there are other people there too. Usually I can’t see them, except for last night in the windstorm. I saw Revali and Ze— the Princess. And I thought that maybe these things had really happened. Except that would be crazy, right? Trees don’t just fly up in the air.”

She tried to interject, but he was talking faster and faster. “So it must be a blend of memories and weird dream shit, right? I’ve never seen Revali, but I knew it was him. Big blue bird.” He sketched wings in the air with his hands. “Memories. But not all of them. Once I dreamed I was building a dam with Paya in a field. So that’s just dream bullsh—”

“No,” she gasped. He frowned at her. “A dam in a field, with a village in the distance?”

“What?”

“And a river to the west?”

He closed his eyes and mapped out east and west in his mind.

“That was me with you. The Rutala River flooded during the Calamity.” She was at the railing now, pointing to the lowlands below them. “We sandbagged a portion of the Millennio Plain as Hyrule Field was evacuated.”

Link was beside her, wordlessly tracing his finger along the edge of the wetlands. The village had been there. The dam had gone there. The water had risen to there.

“You must have suspected by now that you might be dreaming of the Calamity.”


	4. Living the gold and silver dream

In hindsight, it was obvious there’d been a sword. Every weapon he’d held had been wrong in some way: too long or short, too heavy or light, unbalanced compared to some mystery weapon familiar to his muscle memory.

He realized it somewhere in the husk of Goponga Village. While pillaging yet another monster nest, he’d picked up a broadsword, followed shortly by that sudden ice-water sensation he’d come to associate with a memory. It had weighed the same as this one, balanced a little more to the blade, maybe a hair longer. With it in his hand, did the steam off the water seem a little mistier, a little whiter? When he swung it, did the air ring faintly with the peal of a bell?

He was mildly annoyed when it broke a few hours later. Brooding on the step of the shrine as the sun sank low, he tossed it into the bog. He’d nearly made it to Linebeck Island, but was forced to backtrack to find shelter for the night. He took a last look at the watery ruins of the village as the night chill chased him into the shrine.

_Chime._

He dreamed of Goponga. A favoured haunt for cadets on a day off; an hour’s ride to Mabe Ranch and another hour to that lively wooden town. “Can we come here again next year?” he asked his mother as he trotted behind her, trying not to lose her in the rhythm of the market district.

“You’ll come here all the time when you’re bigger,” she replied, passing him a skewer of fried fish balls. “It’ll be a quick trip once you’re at the Castle.”

“How big do I have to be for that?”

“Just one more year.” She ruffled his hair as he started to whine. “I don’t make the rules, darling, the Commander says you can’t start early.”

He leaned against her leg as he ate his snack. “I wanna be like you and Papa.”

She laughed. “You’ll be like us before you know it! There’s no need to rush. You can be a famous explorer this year and a knight next year.”

“I told you already, Mama. I’m gonna be a traveling mountain climbing knight now.”

She shook her head in amusement, and he saw her in perfect clarity for a single moment, sunlight in her short brown hair, glowing freckles and a crooked smile and radiant warmth, infectious, warming even that hot summer day. “Why are you in such a rush?”

_Chime._

It was raining now in that wooden town, but still muggy and hot, damp air clinging to their skin. They darted between awnings to where they’d hitched their horses, pockets jangling with the trinkets they’d bought.

“’S your fault,” Bannan panted, wiping water out of his eyes. “You were talking to Bazz too long.”

“Is not!” he retorted. “Wes isn’t even back yet.”

“So? We’re not waiting for him, he’s busy shopping for his _girlfriend_.” The other boy stuck his tongue out. “Let’s go, my socks are wet.”

They reached the covered stable and flopped on the ground, tucked just under the eave. “We’ll give him five minutes,” Link reasoned.

Bannan shook his head. “That won’t teach him anything!”

“Five minutes or he’s walking home.”

“Ha! I like it.”

Wes peeled around the corner as they were unhitching the horses. “Wait up,” he gasped.

“Didja buy her something nice?” Bannan jeered.

“Shut up! She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Is so,” Link teased. “You love her.”

“You’re one to talk!” Wes retorted from atop his mount. “Didja buy anything for your lady friend?”

“I didn’t— she’s not—”

“Oooohh!” Bannan made a wet smacking sound, their previous alliance forgotten. “Better turn around, she’ll feel left out—”

“She doesn’t want anything—”

“What, too busy swingin’ a sword to hang out with her?”

_Chime._

The rain was torrential now, ice cold on his skin. Another flash of lightning illuminated the ruined village, buildings torn to shreds, coloured awnings floating in the streets. The water bit into the sandbags they’d piled at the high point of the plain, waves cresting chest-high between the distant wooden buildings.

He turned to grab another sandbag and he saw Paya and _this is a dream that is Impa this is the end of the world._ He froze as if electrified, as if the next lightning bolt had struck him square in the head.

“Keep going!” Impa cried. “We have to buy her more time!”

He looked over her shoulder at the dark line snaking up the distant hillside. “Zelda’s evacuating Hyrule Field.” As he said it, he was there, standing on a ridge in the darkest hour of the night, ushering family after family through the hurricane, shouting until his throat bled.

“Go to the bridge, then up the saddle — go to the bridge, then up the saddle —”

How had it come to this?

_Chime._

He looked down at the ringing silver blade in his hand, a glowing gash against the black night, and he didn’t remember so much as he understood. Wide awake now, staring at the ceiling of the shrine, the veil lifted on the oldest truth of his existence: the call of the sword. He’d first heard it as a child in Hateno, whispering to him when the forge fell quiet, when he lay in bed at night. He’d heard it a little louder as a youth fishing by the river, perched on the rocky bank with a spear in hand. Louder still in the stone barracks of a citadel, audible above the soldiers’ din, calling him out onto the promenade, where the chime rang through the cool night air.

The echo of that chime called him out into the misty dawn, where he sat again on the step of the cold dead shrine and stared at the cold dead village. Gentle wind on the water, lapping softly at the rotten husks of the buildings he used to haunt with his friends.

Gulley, Mama, Bannan, Wes. Alive and vibrant in the harbour, alive and glowing in the market, alive and rowdy in the rain. He stashed them away in his mind, those snapshots where they still breathed and spoke and lived. _Keep them safe a little longer._

The slate read 5:15AM. That would have to do. Still tired, he struggled to his feet and adjusted his gear, praying the city would be around the corner.

—

The city was not around the corner. He stood on the bridge and squinted upriver. Another day away, at least. Delightful.

Sidon hadn’t mentioned that the road would be a million kilometres long. Bivouacking under a ledge away from the wretched rain, he cursed the giant fish. He was certain he could have gotten a lift; the Prince was twelve feet tall, for crying out loud. At least the shelter was better here, he grudgingly acknowledged. The last sucker to come through this way had left a lean-to behind. He crawled under the tattered canvas and let the sounds of the rain fade from his mind.

For once, he didn’t dream of the apocalypse. He and his father sat side by side on the lip of the citadel battlement, watching distant waterfalls plummet into Lake Akkala.

“I could go to Zora’s whenever I wanted if I could swim up the falls,” he said. “Bazz came that way when he visited. He swims up and up, then down. We have to go all the way around.”

“Mmm.”

“Do you think I could rappel down the—”

“No.”

He idly kicked his heels against the wall. Better not tell him about last week, then.

His father sighed. “It is a long trip here.”

Link waited him out.

“It’s time I returned to service in the Castle.”

“Oh.” He’d been to the Castle just once. He didn’t remember much of it; the stone corridors blended with those of the citadel in his mind. “How long has it been?”

“Three years in the fall.”

Three years since his father had left the Royal Guard, opting for Akkala monster patrols rather than a full leave of absence. Three years since he’d collected his son from Hateno and turned north, to a fresh start.

“The King’s been requesting me.” His father shifted uneasily. “I’ve put it off enough. We could leave next week if you’re ready.”

“I’m coming too? Not back to Gulley’s?”

His father squeezed his shoulder. “I like having you with me. You could come and live in Castle Town. But it’s up to you.”

“I’d get to join up like you?”

“You don’t have to serve. Not every Castle kid your age is military.”

“What if I want to?”

His father looked weary. “I discussed this with your mother years ago. To bring you to the Castle or not.”

They rarely spoke about his mother, and never seriously, not like this.

“Everyone was sure you’d be a knight. Son of two Guard members and all that. But there’s…there are things you can’t do as a page. Remember how you wanted to be a mountaineer?” His father half-smiled, a ghost of a laugh on his breath. “Military’s not a bad gig. I’ve travelled most of the country, feels like. But it’s not tourism. You can see loads of mountains, but you can’t just run off and climb them. You understand? It’s a trade.”

He nodded. “That’s fine.”

“You sure?”

His father’s hesitancy was lost on him. The man was torn between the comfort of having his child with him and the apprehension of bringing him into an adult’s world. The Royal Guard had given him a purpose, a livelihood, but had taken his wife away, taken all other possibilities from him.

But Link hadn’t lived that life himself, and any warning from his father lacked the context needed to make it worth heeding. All he knew was a scoreboard at the citadel’s archery range, a dreamlike chime urging him to draw a sword, and a father whose grey face grew a little softer every time he returned from patrol to his waiting son.

“I’m sure.”

—

Being from an outlying village, he’d grown up with a bow and quiver in hand rather than a sword and shield. Wes had noticed his lack of experience early on and had done his best to stunt on him, thinking he’d look like hot shit.

The other boy was unprepared for how quickly Link would learn. He wasn’t the most attentive one in training, either; not the training he attended with the other pages, at least. Lying awake at night, the chime would draw him to his weapon, draw him to the deserted walkways to practice drills no living soul had shown him. If he slept, he would instead practice in a misty dream world, put through his paces by a ghostly warrior twice his size.

In the first month of sparring, he was knocked on his ass more times than he could count. A few months later, he was able to put up a reasonable fight. Another couple of months past that, and he bested Wes for the first time, cracking him on the forearm and shoving him to the ground.

A bruised ego, a mess hall shoving match, and a ten o’clock barracks scuffle later, they sat side by side against the lip of the watchtower, sharing the honey candy Link had pilfered from the kitchen. They were too young to be left alone on watch duty, and therefore were at liberty to goof off, Wes reasoned. Flawless logic, as far as Link was concerned.

“So you really just cook it down, eh? It’s that easy to make?” Wes popped another in his mouth.

Link nodded. “We used to make ‘em all the time in Hateno.”

“I never thought about it, I guess. We never made stuff like this at home, we just bought ‘em from the traders.”

They snapped to attention at the sound of approaching footsteps. Commander Osfala strode by them, making his circuit of the battlements. They sank back onto the ground as he turned the corner.

“What’s it like out east? I’ve never been to Necluda.”

“It’s way different. No army.”

Wes frowned. “What do you do if there’s no army?”

“Dicked around with my best friend all day. Shield surfing, fishing, climbing.” Link smiled. “One time we tried to make a glider. His mama wouldn’t let us test it off the roof, so we had to try it down by the harbour.”

“That’s way cooler than Gatepost. We used to try and sneak onto the Plateau, but the Sheikah guards always caught us.”

“Yeah, they always caught me sneaking into the Spring of Power. Maybe they should do night watch instead of us.”

“You’re right.” Wes giggled. “Wait, the Spring of Power isn’t in Hateno, is it?”

“No, it’s in Akkala. I went to the Citadel with my papa after Mama died.”

“Oh.”

An uncomfortable silence. Link sucked on another candy, stared at the stars.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

Wes fiddled with the hem of his tunic. “That was during the Yiga attack, right?”

Link nodded. “She was the Queen’s personal guard that day. Didn’t work out so well for them.” He gave a half-smile to Wes, whose mouth hung partially open, not sure if he was at liberty to laugh. “Want the last one?”

“Nah, you take it.”

“I’m still eating mine. All yours.” He stuffed it in the other boy’s pocket.

“Thanks.” His friend finally cracked a smile, tension broken at last. “Shit, here he comes.” Paper wrappers crinkling in their pants, they scrambled to their feet as Osfala approached.

—

A year after he joined, he began to wonder if his father had been wrong about the military. _I’ve travelled most of the country, feels like._ The most travelling he’d done so far had been from the barracks to the training hall to the watchtower. He hadn’t seen a mountain in more than a year.

By that winter, he was truly losing his mind. Commander Osfala had caught him practicing his swordplay on the roof at night, doublet over his pyjamas and old socks over his gloves. He wasn’t angry, surprisingly; he simply showed him the spare key to the training hall and ushered him inside. A kind gesture, but until then, he didn’t realize how the cold air and the night sky were his sanctuary from the bustle of the castle.

When news broke of a deployment in the new year, he was beyond relieved. He didn’t care that it was just to the Great Plateau and nearby Faron, just to teach the kids how to live out of a rucksack. When they finally left the castle, those imposing stone walls fading into the distance, he felt like he was breathing again after a year and a half without air.

On their first free day on the Plateau, they climbed Mount Hylia. Lying spread-eagled on the summit, steam rising from the open collar of his doublet, he let out a whoop of triumph. Home at last, finally back in the wild.

He shaded his eyes with his hand to squint up at Bannan, the other boy’s silhouette covering the sun in the sky. “We did it,” he grinned. “Another one bagged.”

“What do you mean, ‘bagged’?” Irene tossed her pack on the ground to his right.

“That’s what you call it when you climb lots of mountains. You bag peaks.” Link rolled onto his side and grabbed an apple from his own rucksack. “There’s a few good ones where we’re going next.”

“What, Mount Faloraa?” Bannan fumbled for his map.

“Yeah, that one, right?” Link pointed directly south. His companions blanched.

“That’s Mount Granajh, and there’s no way we’re doing that!” Irene shook her head vehemently. “It’s too early in the year, we’ll freeze.”

“Huh. Maybe.” Link shrugged. “We’ll get it next time, then.”

They ate a late lunch on the summit, pointing out landmarks they recognized and making up names for the ones they didn’t. Irene frowned at Link as he dug around in the snow.

“What are you looking for?”

“Got one.” He unearthed a sizeable rock and balanced it on top of the cairn behind them.

“Is that another mountain-climber thing?”

“Yup.”

Bannan shook his head. “You’re crazy.” They hoisted their packs onto their shoulders and began their descent.

—

If Bannan thought he was crazy on their day hike, Link could only imagine what he thought when the boy stumbled across his midnight practice session. Shield bash, three slashes of the sword, spin attack — and he spotted his friend’s face poking out from behind the temple wall, sleepy and utterly confused.

He sheathed his sword. “What are you doing up so late?”

“What am I — are you serious? I got up to go pee! You’re the one breaking curfew!”

“The Commander doesn’t mind.”

“You mean you do this all the time?” Link shrugged. Bannan looked boggled. “When the hell do you sleep?”

“I sleep.”

“You’re nuts.” Bannan shook his head. “Why are you practicing behind the Temple, anyway?”

“I dunno, just seems like a good place.” The chime rings a little louder here, he didn’t say. The ghost warrior is a little stronger here. “Why are you peeing behind the Temple?”

“I’m not! I just — went for a walk. I don’t know.”

“Did you hear something? See something?” He tried to sound nonchalant.

“No. It’s just…it’s nice here. I like the smell of the trees. Castle Town just smells like horse poop.”

“Mmmm.” Damn it.

Since arriving on the Plateau, he’d withheld countless comments and observations in his effort to not look weird. Why does the Goddess statue glow? Why are there always voices whispering when it’s quiet? Does anyone else see a mythical sword every time they shut their eyes? He couldn’t be the only one dreaming of crows, torches, silver fog giving way to a golden clearing. The Master Sword, the Sword That Seals The Darkness, the Blade of Evil’s Bane: it went by many different names, but it was the same sword in every child’s favourite fairy tale. Everyone must dream of it, he figured; we’re training to be knights, after all. Yet something told him that wasn’t the case, and so it was never shared, not with Bannan, not with Wes, not with Papa.

At any rate, it didn’t matter. In a year and a half, he’d risen to the top of his cohort in weapons training, the Commander was in awe of his dedication, and he never fell asleep on night watch anymore. What did it matter if he didn’t share every detail of his life?

Bannan was saying something. He shook himself from his reverie. “Sorry?”

“I’m saying thanks, dummy. For taking us up the mountain today. I wanna do it again sometime.”

“For sure.”

Bannan shot him a half-grin. “Well, I’m going back to bed. Coming?”

_Chime._

“I’ll do a few more first. See you back there.”

—

The Faron Sea was a murky green and freezing cold when they arrived. “The air tastes like salt,” Irene commented, scrunching her nose.

“Huh?” Link’s boots were already off, and he stood ankle-deep in the surf, ocean breeze ruffling his grimy hair.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s like an ice bath. Makes your feet stop hurting.”

She ripped her boots off and came to join him, shrieking as she stepped into the water. “It’s freezing!”

He grinned. “Damn right.”

Bannan had saved a skin of glacier water from the River of the Dead, and he poured it into their dented mugs like a fine whiskey as they sat around the fire that night. “I was going to save it for your birthday,” he informed Link, “but this is a good time too.”

“What’s today?”

“The halfway point! Six weeks until we sleep in our beds again.”

Wes raised his mug in appreciation. “Cheers.”

On watch duty that night, he practiced his sword strokes. Irene mimicked him for a little while, but lost interest as the night wore on. “You’re so uptight,” she yawned. “You’re always practicing.”

“I gotta keep up with you lot.” It’s all I think about, awake or asleep.

“Keep up?” She snorted. “You’re whooping our asses, dude. I joined when I was seven and you’re crushing me. Wes’ dad had him swinging a sword before he could walk, and he says he’s never seen anyone fight like you.”

Shield bash, three slashes of the sword, spin attack. “I still feel like I’m behind, though. You all have three years on me. Wes has more.” That much was true.

“Where’d you learn that move, anyway? The spinny one. Osfala doesn’t do that.”

“My dad showed me.” The ghost warrior taught me.

She frowned. “When? Hasn’t he been in Zora’s since, like, the summer?”

Dammit. “He’s been my dad for a long time, you know. I just tried it out recently.” I’m a regular kid like you, I swear.

That answer was good enough for her. “I wish there were knights in my family. Maybe I’d suck less.”

It was a relief when they accepted his white lies. In truth, the novelty of being the whiz kid was starting to wear off. Osfala side-eyed him now if he mucked around off-duty with the others, and Bannan would notice if he slept in his cot three nights in a row. And he was tired of sleep without rest, tired of the golden clearing and the silver sword, tugging at his consciousness like a compass needle to a magnet, always north and to the east. When he practiced his sword strokes, he always found himself facing that direction; when he zoned out, he came back to his senses always staring that way.

He was beginning to wonder if the fabled blade was real, and that irked him more than he would care to admit. It’s a folk tale, some historical weapon elevated to legend. Hell, none of the myths even followed a consistent timeline. If he could just prove its nonexistence to his unconscious self, he’d get his dreams back, he was sure.

North and to the east. Six weeks until the end of the mission, two weeks of leave after that. Plenty of time to investigate the situation, disprove all those bedtime stories. When he followed the chime and inevitably found nothing, it would finally be put to rest.


	5. But they were carried from the house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm frustrated by passive women in media, so I tried to give Mipha more agency. Not sure if it works. Not sure if it fits into the canon.

Zora’s Domain felt like a fever dream. How did Bazz and Sidon get so big? Where was the relentless energy of the city, up at all hours, open and welcoming? Why did Dorephan wear that grey face the same way his father did?

He stood in the plaza as Muzu and Sidon argued, looked at the statue in the pouring rain, and remembered.

It all started with Mipha.

When he was five, he visited the Domain for the first time. He was far too young to understand Hyrulian geopolitics, but his father did his best. “The Zora get hurt badly by electric monsters, right? So we kill the electric monsters for them, and they kill the water monsters for us.”

That was a good enough answer for him. Electric monsters would have made it hard for him to climb the surrounding mountains, of which there were many. That summer, while his parents escorted caravans to and from the city, Bazz, Mipha, and Kodah dragged him up and down the waterfalls.

“You’re so heavy,” Kodah panted, dropping him onto the grass at the top of the Veiled Falls. “Don’t get any bigger, Linny, or you’re walking.”

He threw a fistful of grass at her. “You’re gonna be twelve feet tall or something. You’ll be fine.”

“Hylians grow faster than Zora! You’ll be bigger than me next year, just wait.”

They lay in the sun, pointing out interesting clouds. Mipha fidgeted.

“You’re antsy,” Bazz remarked.

“Aren’t we going to climb the mountain? We started so late already, and we’re only losing daylight.”

“But we’re comfy!” Kodah protested. “It was so rainy last week.”

“It’ll be sunny at the top too. We said we’d do it today. We can’t give up.”

They rose to their feet somewhat grudgingly and headed west, up the gentle slope. An hour later, they were face-to-face with a cliff, flummoxed.

“I think we missed a switchback somewhere,” Link mused, scratching his head.

“That’s fine.” Mipha was already on the move. “The cliff is shorter on our right. We might be able to find a way up.”

They traversed the crag, searching for an easy ascent. Mipha pointed out an old moraine. “That looks good.”

Bazz shook his head. “That’s still too steep!” But Link and Mipha were already scrambling up the rocky slope.

They reached the summit in the late afternoon, Bazz and Kodah so far behind he’d lost sight of them long ago. He showed Mipha how to build a cairn.

“It’s very cute,” she remarked, standing back to admire the shabby stack of rocks. “I haven’t done this before, but it’s quite enjoyable.”

“You haven’t gone exploring?” She shook her head. “Really? But you’re so good at it.”

A tiny smile. A classic Mipha habit, immortalized on her statue. “I said I would go with you, so I did. I’m actually quite tired.” She laughed. “But I always keep my promises.”

A few weeks later, he walked backwards across the Great Zora Bridge, waving goodbye until he couldn’t see his new friends anymore, his mother guiding him by the hand. “Can we come back next summer?” he asked her.

She smiled at him. “We’ll be deployed here in the summer for the next few years. I’m glad you’re friendly with the other kids.”

He nodded. “Mipha’s really nice. She’s good at everything.”

“She sure is.” His mother chuckled. “When she sets her mind to something, nothing can stop her.”

—

When he was seven, Mipha met him at the arched entrance of the bridge with a big hug.

“I’m so sorry about your mother,” she said. “I cried for days when we got the news.”

“It’s alright,” he said, out of habit more than anything. Of course it wasn’t alright.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t see you at the service. My parents had state business right after, I had to go with them.” She paused. “Should we talk about her, or is it better if I don’t?”

Where to even begin? “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

She was quiet as they began to walk back to the Domain.

“I was supposed to be a page this year.”

“Oh? Not anymore?”

“Papa says we’re going to the Citadel after we leave. He’s doing Akkala monster patrols now.”

“All the cadets start their training in Central Hyrule, right? You can’t join if you’re with your father?”

He nodded. “It’s like I’m a whole different person now.”

She sighed. “The world is changing. I wish we were a little older.”

They arrived in the city to a storm of activity. White-robed Sheikah skittered to and fro, cluttered tables and tents erected in the middle of the refined stone plaza. Link’s jaw was on the floor. “What’s happening?”

“It’s a bit far to go today, but I can show you tomorrow if you’d like.” Mipha smiled. “They’ve made a discovery.”

They were up early the next day, the sun not yet peeking over Ploymus Mountain, Mipha nearly running to keep up with him. “You grew so much,” she complained. “My little legs can’t keep up.”

They arrived at the East Reservoir Lake before the day’s work had begun. The makeshift station in the plaza was dwarfed by the scale of the operation here: scaffolding, pumps, machinery, and enormous heaps of books on every available surface.

He squinted. “Is that a diving bell?”

“Yes. Do you want to come see it?” But he was already halfway down the pier.

Closer to the water now, he could see something below the surface. Like a tree trunk, maybe; no, far wider, three times his own height in diameter, maybe more. He traced the outline with his finger, followed it down until it connected to something even larger, down into the dark bottom of the lake.

“They’re calling it a Divine Beast.” Mipha sat down next to him, dangling her feet in the water. “The Sheikah say it’s ten thousand years old.”

“Was it in there this whole time?”

“Yes, buried in the lakebed. It was partly exposed even before they began excavating. That’s how we found it.”

“How big is it? Have you seen it? What does it do?” He stuck his face into the water for a better view.

“It’s enormous. It’s longer than this pier, even without the trunk. The Sheikah have to use the diving bell to work on it, but we can just swim down.” She twitched with excitement. “Long ago, it protected the Domain. There’s said to be more around Hyrule. The Sheikah say they’re excavating another one in Gerudo.”

“Wow.” He shook the water out of his hair. “What are they going to do with it?”

“I can’t say. Only my parents and the other leaders know for sure. I want to be a part of it, though.” That little smile. “If there’s a way to help our homeland, I’ll do everything I can.”

—

When he turned ten, he was stuck in the castle, unable to get leave. The post carrier delivered four letters to him that morning in the mess hall. One from Gulley and his parents. One from Bazz. One from Kodah. One from Mipha.

“Which one’s your girlfriend?” Wes singsonged. “You’re so popular!”

“Shut up, loser,” he retorted, hiding his flush behind his glass of milk.

That night, he opened Mipha’s letter first.

> _Link,_
> 
> _Happy birthday! My parents and Sidon wish you well. We’ve had quite the rainstorm lately, the uplands are a giant mud pit. You’re not missing much by being in the castle, although we would all love to have you with us._
> 
> _Progress has slowed with Ruta, but you’ll be pleased to hear that my nickname for her is now official. Director Robbie is finally allowing me to be more involved. I drew you a sketch of her interior. Hopefully the Sheikah will let me give you a tour next time you visit. The ceiling of the main chamber is thirty metres high! I tried to draw a Zora for scale, but it looks more like a thistle._
> 
> _I’ll be visiting the castle next month with my parents for solstice celebrations. I’m looking forward to seeing you! Perhaps you can show me around Castle Town. I get so lost without the mountains around me._
> 
> _Write soon and don’t eat too much cake._
> 
> _Mipha_

He smiled as he opened her drawing. He imagined her flitting about the giant machine, vivacious and driven.

> _Mipha,_
> 
> _You didn’t stop me in time and I ate too much cake. Now I’m eight feet tall. You’ll never catch up to me._
> 
> _It’s muggy here in the summer. On our day off, we went swimming in the Castle waterway. There’s a pool near the barracks that we’re allowed to use. Wes doesn’t believe Zora can swim up waterfalls. You should show him up when you visit._
> 
> _We get a week off after the solstice. I’m supposed to visit Hateno, but I’ll try and stop by the Domain too._
> 
> _Say hi to your parents and Sidon for me. See you soon._
> 
> _Link_

—

When he turned twelve, he was in a smelly tent somewhere along the Floria River with a smelly company of exhausted cadets. He read Mipha’s birthday letter four times, even as Bannan jeered. _Come celebrate a belated birthday with us_ , she’d written, _I miss you_ , and he’d daydreamed of warm winds and blowing grasses in the Zorana Uplands, cool headspring water between his toes, and Mipha, her smile, her drive, her infectious love for the world…

When the cadets finally arrived back at the castle after three months on the road, dirty and hungry and desperate for a proper bed, he had nothing but the Domain on his mind. Yet when he closed his eyes, he was back in that misty forest again, embers and crows and trees with faces, the golden clearing and the silver sword, pink petals in the heavens and a beam of sunlight straight through the canopy, lighting up that timeless blade.

He stood on the Thims Bridge now, looking left, then right. He was long overdue in the Domain, and had every intention of going there. Yet the chime called him north and slightly west, risen in volume until it sounded like a distant cathedral. He could manage a quick out-and-back, stay the night in Goponga if needed, then ride to the Domain the day after. It was worth a day’s detour to finally put that stupid dream to rest.

In hindsight, it was obvious it was the sword.

His heart nearly stopped when he saw the misty archway, the crows, embers drifting from lit braziers in the exact same patterns from his dreams. Who on earth had lit the torches, was his first thought. And then he stepped into the cold silver fog.

Unsettling, to see an identical forest with his eyes open and with them closed, the path unfolding before him exactly the way it had in his dreams. The rattling of the forest spirits, the wind whistling through the open mouths of the trees — how could something be brand new and yet utterly familiar? When he reached the golden glade, right where he knew it would be, his breath was ragged, knees shaking, heart pounding.

The sword…

He walked to it slowly, as if in a trance. Glowing silver, three triangles and two wings, one-third lodged in that ancient mossy pedestal, calling to him. As he lay a hand on the hilt, he felt the power of the earth reach up through his feet and take hold of him, and the air shimmered as energy leaped from the blade to his fingers.

_Grasp the sword. Pull the sword._

A great rustling, shifting, creaking from deep within the ground startled him, and he stumbled backwards, heart either racing or stopping, he couldn’t tell which. And the enormous tree before him had a face, and the tree let out a great sigh, scattering pink petals across the glade, and opened its eyes and looked straight into his soul.

“Ah…so you have awakened once more, Hero.”

He had truly lost his mind, he was sure of it.

“I expect you do not know who I am. I am the Deku Tree, guardian of the Korok Forest and of the Master Sword. When the lineage of Heroes is neither continuous nor regular, I am here, waiting for the next warrior to claim the blade.”

“I…wha…”

He felt the tree’s rumbling laugh shake his insides. “Many a Hero before you has worn that look on their face. The call of the sword has drawn you here, has it not? Since you were but a child?”

“That ringing? You know it?”

“Ah, many of those before you said the same. The Master Sword was forged by Hylia, tempered by the flames of the ancient gods. That chime is the voice of the Goddess’ gift, calling you to take up your blade.”

The tree’s brow furrowed as he stood there, terrified. “Hm…but what is this? You are still so young…there is great risk in handing such a fate to a child.”

He opened his mouth to inquire, but nothing came out. He knew the stories by heart: a hero holding the moon in the sky, a hero trapped in the guise of a wolf, a hero slipping between reality and a dark world. Now he truly processed how macabre the fairy tales were. Would he be cursed into a painting, trapped within an animal’s body, crushed by the falling stars?

“Three beings have held Hyrule in equilibrium since time immemorial. The princess, the demon, the hero, reborn time and time again. It has been quite a long time since the three have met, but when you take up the Sword, you will see these events unfold once more. But so soon…it is too soon…”

The tree sighed. “I recall one Hero younger than you who took up this blade in Hyrule’s eleventh hour. Even armed with a sacred blade, one so young is badly matched against evil.”

“The Hero of Time,” he croaked. “He was frozen.”

“For seven years, yes. It cost him greatly, but was necessary to win the day.”

“Please don’t freeze me,” he begged. “Please, I don’t want to go — my dad, my friends—”

“Do not fear, child. It tore our reality apart to do so. I do not know if it could even be done again. And yet to draw the Sword now, before the signs of Calamity have presented themselves…I fear that may start the cycle before Hyrule is ready.”

“Drawing the Sword will cause a calamity?” He swayed on the spot. “How is that possible?”

“Power will be met with power,” the tree rumbled. “An awakening of the Sword would be felt in every corner of the realm. Yes, it would prudent to wait…the Princess is only ten years old…I sense there is time yet.”

He was ready to run at the first sign of a mythical freezing ray. “Please, please, let me go and I’ll do anything.”

“I will not harm you, Hero, and I have no desire to destroy the fabric of time while the sun yet shines. The Master Sword lies dormant today, but when you come of age, it will be with the sacred blade on your back. Go, live out your youth, but know that you will return.”

He nodded vigorously, desperately trying not to collapse onto the pedestal with relief. “I’ll return.”

Like hell he’d return to this cursed forest.

He rode across the Great Zora Bridge the next afternoon, sun high in the sky, and he felt lucky to be alive and breathing, as if he’d had a brush with doom the day before. And Mipha was there, dazzling and vibrant, and his heart leaped as he dismounted and ran to meet her.

“Happy birthday,” she beamed. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

He hugged her tight. “Me too.”

—

He was thirteen when he started to notice the castle’s atmosphere changing. The Crown had always funded technological research, but it was brought to the forefront with the grand opening of a new tech lab, massive and shiny and a safe distance from the castle. He’d been unfortunate enough to have missed the huge courtyard explosion that prompted its construction, and had to get the story from his father.

“Those Sheikah folk are whacked,” he grumbled. “I still don’t know what the experiment was for.”

“Was the King mad?”

“‘Course he was. They nearly blew up his daughter.”

He rode out to the lab with Wes on their next day off, hoping to catch another mushroom cloud, but were disappointed to find it closed. “Do you think they got shut down already?” he asked Irene when they got back.

“Didn’t you hear? They found another Divine Beast in Hebra. They’re probably out there excavating.”

The Divine Beasts were a hot topic as of late. Ruta was nearly functional, according to Mipha, and the Gerudo beast — Naboris, he’d heard it called — was well on its way. There was another one buried near the Spring of Power, but excavations had been at a standstill as the clergy debated whether it was blasphemous to excavate so close to a sacred site.

“They say they’re supposed to protect us from disaster,” said Irene. “The clergy thinks we’re all going to catch on fire and die.” He giggled along with the others, swallowing down the primal terror that stabbed at his gut.

It was a relief when he was deployed to Lanayru Bay that winter, an escape from the castle’s rumour mill. Clearing snow and ice and monsters from the traders’ overland route to the Rutala River, he lost himself in the rhythm of work. Crawling into his cot bone-tired every night, he was relieved beyond measure to have no dreams for once.

If he listened too closely, he could still hear whispers of war on people’s tongues. A Lynel had been spotted in the Lodrum Headlands. Traders spoke of uncertainty, plans to diversify trade routes for better security. If he stepped away from the bustle of the docks for a moment, he could sometimes hear Ruta trumpeting in the distance, splashing around the East Reservoir Lake.

The solution was not to listen, never catch a breath during the day, work hard enough to sleep like a dead man each night. He practiced his swordplay on the rocky coast on his days off, the crashing waves dulling any stray thought.

He was grateful when Mipha came to visit him. He wished she didn’t talk about the Divine Beast so much.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she remarked one day as they hiked up to the Rabia Plain. “You’ve been withdrawn this whole mission.”

“Have I?” he said, trying to sound absent, oblivious.

“They’re working you too hard,” she teased, a smile on her lips.

“You’re right. I’ll tell the traders to turn around next time.”

She laughed. “Give it a few years, and they’ll be doubled in volume! We’ve made so much headway with Ruta, she’ll be down here helping before you know it.”

She must have felt his hesitation. “We’d never bring her down here before all appropriate safety protocols are in place. And Director Robbie hasn’t blown anything up since the Castle incident, you have nothing to worry about.”

He looked at her skipping through the snow, red against white, animated and smiling and beautiful. What he would give to have an ounce of her determination. He smiled at her. “I’m not worried.”

“You’re a liar.” She shoved him lightly. “Something is on your mind.”

“The castle civilians worry about the Beasts.” When he spoke the truth to her about his fears, it was always through a screen. They worry, they fear, they wonder.

She nodded. “I’ve heard the Hylians in the Domain wonder many things about the Beasts. Why they might be emerging at this time, what purpose they may have served in the past.

“These Divine Beasts were crafted during a golden age of Hyrule, did you know that?” She turned and walked to the edge of the river now. “I’ve read some of Robbie’s texts, and it’s truly astounding. A population more than double what we have now, sustained by this technology. Advanced farming equipment, transportation far faster than a horse. All Sheikah in design, facilitated by the Divine Beasts and their capabilities.”

She reached the riverbank and looked upstream to the trader’s route, where he had been breaking his back for weeks. “The Princess showed me schematics for a canal across the Samasa Plain. Think of how many mouths we could feed with something like that! I’ll admit I can barely understand her and the Sheikah when they get technical, but imagine the good we could do.”

“How is that even possible?” He craned his head out over the river. “There’s at least a hundred metres elevation.”

She beamed. “They think they can build a boat elevator with pumps. Ruta can generate the water for it, they just need the infrastructure to contain it.”

Her excitement was contagious, lifting his spirits. “That’s incredible.”

“Isn’t it?” Goddesses, her boundless ambition. “I have heard the rumours and the concerns, I won’t lie. But what do we gain from not utilizing the gift we’ve been given? Ruta’s more than a weapon, Link, she’s the future. Even if a force rises to oppose us, there will always be a future beyond it. Never lose sight of that.”

For the first time in weeks, he felt like he could breathe freely, and he smiled at her, smiled and really meant it. “How do you do that? See something amazing and just go for it?”

She squeezed his hand. “I will always follow my heart.”

—

He was fourteen when he became a squire, standing stiffly in impeccable uniform next to his friends as General Sahasrahla read off some dusty speech to a gaggle of dusty nobles. He could barely see Mipha seated with the other leaders of the Five Nations, a red smudge on the balcony. After the ceremony, they pilfered as many refreshments as they could from the reception table, interrupted only by a run-in with a Sheikah Master who Link left spluttering.

“What on earth did you say to her?” Mipha hissed, eyes dancing.

“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled around a hand pie.

They missed his curfew by a mile, running around Castle Town with no awareness of the passing time, and he thanked the Three as he snuck back into the castle that all the commanding officers were well liquored enough not to notice. Through the gates, to the right and along the wall — and he nearly bumped into Bannan, sneaking the other way.

“What th—”

“Shhhh!”

“No one can hear us, Bann, they’re all sloshed.”

“It’s Wes, not the officers.” He checked the barrack window over his shoulder. “He’s gonna — I don’t wanna wake him.”

“Real sweet of you. Where ya going?”

“Nowhere. Go to bed.”

He considered grilling the other boy, perhaps tagging along, but relented. “Well, don’t let me keep you.” He watched as Bannan vanished around the corner, then entered the barracks.

Wes was sitting up in bed. “Why didn’t you follow him?” he asked.

“I’m tired. Why didn’t you?”

“I’ve done my bit already,” he smirked, lounging back against his headboard. “I think he’s got a lady friend.”

“Oh?” Link sat forward on the edge of his bed. “Who?”

Wes rolled his eyes. “You could have told me if you’d followed him.”

“Come on, just tell me. I can get intel later.”

“I’m saying I don’t know, dummy. He’s not obvious like you.” He grinned as Link flushed.

“I don’t—”

“Oh, knock it off. What’s it like being the future king of the Zora?”

“Go to sleep, loser.” Wes cackled as Link pulled the sheets over his head.

—

It was somewhere around here where he lost sense of time, where his recollections became erratic. The Deku Tree’s words echoed in his brain whenever he consented to free thought. _When you come of age, it will be with the sacred blade on your back…such a fate to a child…it cost him greatly, but was necessary to win the day._ His coming-of-age had become his funeral, the end of his freedom.

He began measuring his age differently, now relative to his seventeenth year instead of his birth. Three years, two months to go. Wiping sweat from his brow after another late night in the training hall, it occurred to him that maybe the sword had planned all of this, some divine scheme to choose any old sucker and force him to practice until he was a grand shiny Hero. He locked the door behind him as he left, but stood there with the spare key in the lock for too many minutes, unable to move. Did he have any control over his life anymore? Had he ever really been in charge?

He crawled into the barracks at two in the morning, enough for four hours of restless sleep before dawn patrol. He dreamed of Mipha, except she was older, taller, and dead, floating four feet off the ground. “Link,” she gasped. “Please, the darkness consumes us. You must save my people.”

“What the hell?” he croaked. “Mipha?”

She shook her head, the edges of her spectre rippling. He woke with a start, dawn light peeking through the window as Wes sat up and stretched opposite his own bed, grimacing. “Ready for patrol?” he yawned. “I’m not.”

Link tugged on his boots and disentangled his baldric from yesterday’s clothes, sword still attached. Wes grabbed his arm as he made to leave. “Dude, you’re still in your pyjamas. You sleep okay?”

Fast forward. Two years, four months to go. He felt ice in his belly, even in the dizzying heat of Eldin Canyon, hacking through yet another monster camp. Time was a blur, speeding up when he desperately needed it to slow down, begging to the useless Goddess every night for a do-over, a life without a chime tolling in the darkest recesses of his mind.

Wes crawled to his feet after dinner, a lightly textured stew laden with a suspicious amount of Goron spice. “I hear there’s hot springs near here,” he groaned, wincing as he stretched. “Wanna check it out?”

He shook his head. Leave me, let me panic on my own.

“Come on, it’s close. Not like those monster hikes you used to make us do. Should loosen the old muscles.”

He relented, rising with a groan to follow his friend. Wes pulled him to his feet. “Man, what happened to you? You used to love this shit.”

He dreamed of Mipha, except she was blue instead of red, the same iridescent aqua as the city’s stonework. “My dear,” she sang, “my love. Come find me.”

“Are you Mipha?” he whispered.

“Come save me, Link, I am in the belly of a great beast. Come and set me free.”

“Please, who are you?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but in a flash, she was encased in ice. Bewildered, he looked to his surroundings to see the parched basin of the Great Spring, cracked and barren.

Fast forward. One year, five months to go. The Rito mail carrier could be spotted from miles away, a dark smudge against the grey sky. He landed in a swirl of ice particles, caking on Link’s lashes, and tossed a parcel of letters into the soldiers’ camp like dinner scraps to a pack of wild animals.

He opened Mipha’s letter two days later.

> _Link,_
> 
> _I hope the weather is holding for you. Hebra must be nasty around this time of year. The Rito tell me the monster camps are growing in size as of late. I can’t heal you from across the country, I hope you know._
> 
> _I met your friend Irene not long ago. She’s doing monster patrols in my neck of the woods for the next few months. You didn’t tell me she knew so much about elixirs — her tips have come in handy on several occasions._
> 
> _I’ll be up in Deep Akkala next month, assisting with Rudania. Our work on Ruta is greatly accelerating the process. I’m unable to tell you much more than that, but it’s an exciting project._
> 
> _I miss you. Don’t be a stranger — write soon._
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Mipha_

He dreamed of Mipha, except she was green instead of red, and static, frozen on a canvas in an ornate frame.

“Mipha?” His white knuckles clutched at the painting. “Who are you? What’s happening?”

Silence.

Fast forward. Six months to go. He stood at attention on the parapet, ignoring the muffled giggling of the cadets hiding from him. Funny, looking back on his own time as a page, how much time he pissed away. A night’s watch passed in the blink of an eye now, insignificant as he hurtled toward his appointment with the cursed sword.

Maybe the stupid tree should have just frozen him. Instead, it put him on a tightrope: draw the sword, but not too soon. Defeat the Calamity, but do it at the wrong time and you’ll cause it instead. He’d rather be in stasis. He’d rather be dead.

He collapsed into his bed as the sun bled over the horizon, nearly hitting Bannan as he kicked his boots across the room. The other boy chucked it back at him. “Dude, what the hell?”

“Sorry.” He really meant it. He was painfully aware of how he dragged down those around him, fatalistic and sullen as he was.

“It’s fine.” Bannan turned away, thought better of it, then turned back. “Man, you’ve got to sort your shit out. What’s your deal? Did something happen?”

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? Heat welled up in his throat, and he rubbed his hands coarsely over his face, pressing on his eyes until lights swirled and burst behind his lids.

“Hey, I don’t know what’s up with you, but we’re buds, right?” The other boy stood awkwardly at the other end of the room. Knight training didn’t cover this. “If you ever — just — you can talk, okay? We’re all here.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak in a level voice. The door closed gently, and he shoved his head under his pillow, not allowing even an empty room to judge him for his weakness.

He dreamed of Mipha, except she was grey instead of red, and dead, translucent and shimmering with a lute in her arms.

“You’re not Mipha,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not yet. When another takes up my song, I will be.”

Fast forward and stop. Five weeks to go. He sat against the grimy wall of the armoury, palms pressed against the cool ground as a tether to the world, staring at the tattered paper in his lap.

> _Mipha,_
> 
> _I_

What was he even supposed to say? It had been months since he started the letter, her inked name fading on the paper as he tried and failed to push his pen further, tried and failed to let out the pressure in his brain.

Mipha, I’m ashamed that I needed you to dream for me. Mipha, give me a fraction of your ambition, your optimism, your ability to fearlessly go where you’re needed. Mipha, I see you dead in my dreams each night, the next in a line of tragic Zora women, and I’m terrified. Mipha, you do so much good in the world and I’m a useless twit sucking away your energy and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

He could barely see the weapon racks two feet from his face as he folded the stupid letter for the umpteenth time, paper fraying at the creases, and shoved it back in his pocket. The Deku Tree was full of shit. Imagine a goddess being so stupid as to pick him.

And then he felt his head splitting in two, as if She had sensed his blasphemy and brought a cathedral bell down onto his skull, and then he felt truly stupid, because he’d lived the past five years on tenterhooks when he didn’t need to, because of course She would call him when the time was right, of course the sword would tell him to come back. And the thing he’d dreaded all that time was here, six inches from his face and howling, and he felt nothing at all.

It’s over. My life is finally over.

He rose to his feet and drifted down the corridor, onto the promenade, into the city. They’d notice his absence at evening patrol, but the thought of the ensuing court-martial made him snort. Imagine Osfala at his desk, head in his hands, attempting to punish his favourite student more strongly than the Goddess already had.

North and to the east, to the forest, to the sword, to the end and the beginning.

—

Time never stops.

Three months later, he crossed the Great Zora Bridge to a stiff royal reception, formalities and pageantry, ceremonial swords on the hips of the Zora guards. The Crown Princess vanished into the throne room to meet with the King, and then he was dismissed for the day, left to his own devices with friends he hadn’t seen in more than a year. It tugged at his heart when they greeted him familiarly, as if he expected them not to recognize him. Maybe the sword was not the end of him. Maybe he was still the same person he was before.

Kodah certainly seemed to think so. She and Bazz dragged him down to the lake’s edge and shoved a fishing harpoon into his hands. “We should give you the net instead,” she teased. “You’ve been away for so long, you might have forgotten how to spear fish.”

His cheek twitched as he finally cracked a half-smile. Goddesses, how long had it been? “Shut up,” he rasped, a weak attempt at a chuckle.

“There he is!” she crowed. They splashed up and down the shoreline, swimming and fishing as the sun drifted across the sky. Kodah was telling ridiculous stories, and Bazz splashed him deliberately with every thrust of the spear until he finally shoved him into the water in retaliation, laughing as the Zora boy dragged him along, dunking him into the lake as the fish scattered, shrieking as they surfaced —

To Mipha, red against green, trident in hand. “Link,” she said, by way of a greeting.

The ripples in the lake settled. “Mipha. Hi.”

She looked him up and down. “You’re hurt,” she asserted, eyes fixed on a scratch on his arm.

“Come on, it’s from a tree branch, it’s nothing.”

“Why don’t you come with me, and I can take care of that.” It was not a question. He grabbed his baldric from the riverbank and went to follow her, Bazz and Kodah shooting a million questions at him with their eyes.

“We’ll go to Ruta,” she decided, grasping his arm, and then they were on the deck of the Divine Beast before he could blink.

“What did y—”

“The Divine Beasts have travel gates, as Robbie calls them. We could go to any of the others just as quickly.” He jogged after her as she strode to the nose of the Beast. “Without the ability to assume my post instantaneously, the Five Nations Council would never permit me to leave Ruta. But the Princess of Hyrule is a brilliant woman, and she saw a way to allow us some freedom.” She came to the lip and stopped. “Always able to assist those who need her.”

“Mipha, I’m sorry.”

“I suppose that is my major regret as of late — that I could not do the same. Sit.” She directed him to the ground.

“I was thinking…this reminds me of the time we first met. We were such reckless children, dragging the others up that moraine, but we were determined to finish it. Then, when we reached the top, we realized we had done the same thing for different reasons. You wanted to know how far you could go in the world, always pushing your limits, keeping an eye on the next peak. And I only wanted to go with you.

“I think, somewhere along the way, we must have switched. I have been here the last five years, wrapped in technology and processes I can barely keep up with, because I wanted to see how far I could take it, and in my periphery I saw you rising in the ranks of the Hylian military, pushing yourself just as hard. Parallel paths, but for different reasons.

“It’s not like before, though.” Her hands trembled slightly in the warm wind. “The consequences are far greater than those of dragging our friends up a rock slide. I think, after awhile, I sensed the responsibility you carried was different from my own. My work lifted me up, while yours dragged you down. I think, after some years, we shed what we had to in order to carry on.

“Perhaps we could spend some time together. When all of this is over.” She looked at him directly now. “I know that time does not move backwards — I won’t have you the way I wanted you then. It won’t be like before. The world may be changing, but I cared for you then, and I want that to mean something now.”

Maybe Bazz and Kodah had knocked something loose at the lakeside, because her words nearly made him cry, her unconditional care for him, even after everything that had transpired between them. “I’m sorry for everything. There was just too much, and I couldn’t — I didn’t know —”

“I’m the one who should be sorry.” She squeezed his shoulder, an offering of friendship anew. “I didn’t understand it then, but now I do.”

—

He couldn’t place his clearest memory of her into the fractured timeline of his past life.

He lay in the grass with his head in her lap, her fingers in his hair, his heart in her hands. Red against blue, her smile lighting up the sky.

“There’s some islands to the east I’ve always been curious about,” she was saying. “They’re a little far, but we could do an overnighter.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It’s your decision how you want to spend your lieu time, though. We don’t have to.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” He ran his thumb up and down the back of her hand, draped lazily across his chest.

“You just sound…noncommittal.”

“I’m plenty committed.” He rolled towards her, slipped an arm around her waist. “Let’s go right now.”

She giggled. “That’s not what I meant!”

“Okay.” She shrieked as he nuzzled into her stomach, pushing her back onto her forearms. “What did you mean?”

“That tickles!” She pushed her hand into his hair, pulled his face away. “I meant—”

“Mm?”

“I just meant — you’re withdrawn. You’ve been withdrawing.” The mischief faded from her eyes. “Or perhaps your interests have changed. You don’t go exploring as much now.”

“I don’t get a chance. Army’s been busy.”

“You’ve always found time before, though. I got so many letters about all the places you’d gone, even if it was just a half-day. You practice so much now.” Her finger traced his ear. “You don’t have to be the same person you were ten years ago. I just…I hope it makes you happy.”

I’m happy, he tried to say. You worry too much. He squeezed her hip in response, offered a quick smile.

She waited him out. Of course she was smarter than that.

“A Calamity is coming.” He didn’t mean to begin like that, but it fell out of his mouth unbidden, having been at the tip of his tongue for far too long.

She blew out a long breath.

“I got so many letters about Ruta. You can’t write about her now.”

“I’m not allowed to.”

He rubbed his hand up and down her waist, grounding him, calming him. “She’s a weapon. To fight what’s coming.”

She frowned. “I know there are fears among the populace.”

“They’re well-founded. The Council knows it.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss—”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

She lay back in the grass, sighing. “I never wanted to be in this position. I never wanted to feel distanced from you, but there are things being asked of me that I cannot put aside. I have a role in what is to come, and even though I…” she trailed off, her face skyward, mouth twisted. “I’ve made promises that I must keep. Duty has to come first.”

Suddenly the distance between them was glaringly apparent, a squire fooling around with the princess of a sovereign state. She traced his jawline with her finger, ran her thumb over his cheek.

“Tell me about your plans,” he said, shaking his head as she began to object. “Not for war. For the future.”

“Like what?”

“Like the Samasa Canal.”

“Ah,” she smiled, and his heart clenched, and she lifted her hand from his nape to sketch out schematics in the sky as she described a fantastic future, well beyond what he could imagine. It had been years and years since he last dreamed of anything pleasant, and so he let her do it for him, pulling him along into a world where ships laden with goods sailed to and from Lanayru Bay, where cities flourished and grew, where they could —

“—we could have a chance,” she said. “There will be a time when everything is possible, and when it comes, there could be a place where I’d be with you.”

She was still talking, but he could barely hear her over his heartbeat. “What?”

In response, she hooked her hand under his arm, pulling him level with her. “Don’t you want to do this more than a couple times a year?”

Goddesses, she couldn’t have known his raw desire to live in this world of her design. He sank into her as she giggled. “How, though?” You’re not like me. You have plans. I have nothing.

“When my duties are fulfilled—”

“You’ll be building a canal. And then a super-highway. And then a space elevator.”

She pressed her lips to his forehead, nudging his hair aside with her nose. “And you’ll be there, building it with me. I swear it.”

He was a puddle in her arms, burdens wholly forgotten for a blessed moment. “Are you sure?” Don’t tease me with things I can’t have.

She smiled against his skin, squeezed him tight. “Of course.”

—

The evening before their planned assault of Ruta, he spotted Bazz off-duty, half-reclined against the plaza railing. He flopped down next to his old friend.

“Hey, Bazz,” he said.

“Link! I must thank you for taking care of the Lynel up in the highlands. We greatly appreciate your help.”

“Don’t worry about it. My pleasure.”

Bazz shook his head in amusement. “I don’t know how we managed without you all these years.”

“Muzu knows. You should ask him.”

His friend guffawed. “Muzu can eat it! We young ones all missed you greatly, I assure you.”

He tipped his head back, gazed at the stormy skies. “What was it like? After the Calamity?”

Bazz sighed. “Difficult would be an understatement. We lost so many Zora in those days. Everyone in the Domain is either young or old, you noticed? A generation is missing. And the damage done by Ruta was catastrophic. It’s a miracle the city wasn’t razed.”

“Like Goponga.”

“Goddesses, those poor souls. I have such fond memories of that town.”

“Did many survive?”

Bazz shook his head. “We did everything we could, but it all happened so fast. We spent days pulling survivors from the wreckage. Even one soul saved is a victory, we said.”

Maybe that was Mipha’s legacy, or maybe that was a tenet of the Zora spirit she embodied. Always an eye on the horizon, come what may. That unbreakable optimism, that innate drive to lift up those around her.

They looked on at her cold blue statue, a memorial and a celebration in one. Bazz squeezed his shoulder. “This must be hard for you.”

“Pardon?”

“Being here, knowing she’s gone. You spent so much time in the Great Spring before the Calamity. It’s nothing like it was then.”

Link shook his head. “This was always where I was happiest. I was so afraid of what was coming, except when I was here.”

“Because of Mipha?”

He smiled fondly, because he could see her now, glowing and exuberant and alive, waiting on the bridge, running through the city, building a lopsided cairn atop a peak in the late afternoon sun. “She was too good for me. I don’t know what she saw in me.”

—

The Blight’s spear was the size of a pillar in the city’s plaza, he thought stupidly, as it cracked him hard in the ribs. He could feel the impact even through the adrenaline, sailing across the room and landing with a splash.

Maybe it wouldn’t notice if he quickly pounded one of Paya’s elixirs. He risked it as the demon dissolved into blue strands, gulping the potion in between his heaving breaths, then fumbled for an arrow as it reformed in front of him. Shoot the eye. Kill it before it kills you.

A mechanical whining sound, a red dot focusing on his chest. Shit, it’s shooting me. Drop the bow, grab the shield, no, grip it _that_ way, one foot back, tight through the core and swing right _now_ —

He missed the parry and his shield exploded into splinters, but he managed to nail it in the face with his spear instead, and then it exploded in a fountain of Malice, screeching and convulsing, and then it was gone, and the room was finally silent. Falling to all fours, he groaned as he tried to catch his breath. After a long moment, he retrieved his bow, staggered to the main control unit, and mashed the Slate against the glowing Sheikah eye. Blue swirled around him as he slid down the terminal to rest on the floor.

“Hello, Link.” Red against slate, her warmth, her smile, her love. “Because of your courage, my spirit is now free.”

He gazed blearily up at Mipha’s spectre. “Hi.”

She laughed. “Hi.”

“Goddess, Mipha, I’m so sorry.” He tipped his head back against the terminal. “I should have just talked to you. I should have written more. I was such a coward, and you were so — you were so much better. You had so many plans, and — I don’t know. I should have just talked to you.”

She drifted down to recline next to him. “Talk to me now, then.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

“I was twelve when I first found the sword. I was fucking petrified, you have no idea. I thought I was going to lose everything that day. But the Deku Tree told me to wait. Power will be met with power or something like that. Don’t start a fight you can’t finish. And I thought I’d gotten away with something. I thought things didn’t have to change.”

“But you drew it all the same. Change is a natural process. There’s no way to prevent it, even without the Goddess’ plans at play.”

He nodded. “I felt like I couldn’t control anything in my life. The only times I felt safe were with you, talking about your projects, talking about — saying we could be together. It was the only bright future I could see.

“Would you believe I dreamed about this exact moment?” He stared a hundred years into the distance, into his adolescent mind. “Seeing you — seeing things go badly, over and over again. It’s happened before. The legends, they’re all true.”

“I know. I am descended from Sages. Many of them gave their lives to this fight, and still dedicate their souls to it in death. Their presence lasts within me.”

“I didn’t want you to join them.”

“It’s not your fault.” He couldn’t look at her and keep his composure. “It’s not your fault you got a second chance. Dreaming of the Calamity does not make you accountable for it.”

“I still feel accountable. I knew it was coming. I dreamed of it every night.”

Pain was splashed across her face. “Goddesses, the world is so cruel to children.” How could she, dead and forever adolescent, offer sympathy to him, alive and growing? How could she have so much kindness to share with the world?

He shook his head, a melancholy smile twitching at the corner of his lip. “You’re letting me off easy.”

“You didn’t know the Sheikah weapons would be corrupted, did you?”

“Well, no.”

“Then tell me, what were you to do?”

He rubbed his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I can’t help the way I feel.”

“We rarely can. There’s so little we have control over naturally, yet we blame ourselves every time.”

“You did the same?”

“Of course,” she said, a ghost of a chuckle in her voice. “We’re all the same at heart.”

“I guess. You just…you had so many plans. You were ready to change the world.”

She sighed. “Ruta was never just a weapon to me. She’s capable of so much more than shooting lasers. I still wish I could have seen those projects through, elevated the Five Nations rather than only attempting to preserve them as they were.”

“Tell me about them, then. Your projects.”

“I was just a bureaucrat, Link. I have no blueprints to give you, only lofty hypotheticals.”

“Give me your best hypotheticals. I’ll track down Hyrule’s top nerds.”

She shook her head. “You have enough weighing upon your shoulders. I can’t ask more than what has already been set before you.”

“It’s not a task, it’s a purpose. Give me a future to look forward to.”

The little smile, the twinkle in her eye. “Alright.”


End file.
